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A 






History of Rome 



BY 



CHARLOTTE M. YONGE 

AUTHOR OF "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE," "BOOK OF 
GOLDEN DEEDS," ETC. 




BOSTON 
ESTES AND LAURIAT 



PUBLISHERS 



Copyright, 1878, 1894, 
By Estes and Lauriat. 



aO 






Sftntbcrsttji Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



PREFACE 



r^HIS sketch of the History of Rome covers 
the period till the reign of Charles the Great 
as hea,d of the new Western Empire. The history 
has been given as briefly as could be done consist- 
ently with such details as can alone make it inter- 
esting to all classes of readers. 

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 



vie Contents. 

CHAP, PAGE. 

14. —The Devotion of Deems. B.C. 357 ... 127 

15,— The Samnite Wars 135 

16.— The War withPyrrhus. 280—271 . . . 144 

17.— The First Punic War. 264—240 . ... 151 

18.— Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240—219 . . 163 

19.— The Second Pnnic War. 219 172 

20. The First Eastern War. 215—183 ... 181 
21. — The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 

179—145 ....... .' . 188 

22.— The Gracchi. 187—122 ....'. 195 

23.— The Wars of Marius. 106—98 .... 203 

24.— The Adventures of Marius. 93—84 ... 212 

25.— Sulla's Proscription. 88—71 .... 220 

26.— The Career of Pompeius. 70—63 ... 229 

27.— Pompeius and Caesar. 61—48 242 

28.— Julius Caesar. 48—44 . . . , . 252 

29.— The Second Triumvirate. 44—33 . ... 263 

30. — Caesar Augustus, b.c. 33 — a,d. 14 . . . 273 
31.— Tiberius and Caligula. A.D. 14—41 c , .285 
32.— Claudius and Nero. A.D. 41—68 . .297 

33.— The Flavian Family. 62—96 . , . 305 

34.— The Age of the Antonines. 96—194 . 317 

35.— The Praetorian Influence. 197—284 . . . 326 

36.— The Division of the Empire. 284—312 . . 337 

37.— Constantine the Great. 312—337 ... 345 

38.— Constantius. 337—364 ...... 355 

39.— Yalentinian and his Family. 364r~392. . ♦ 364 



Contents. vii. 

CHAP. PAGE. 

40.— Theodosius the Great. 392—395 . 374 

41.— Alaric the Goth. 395—410 383 

42.— The Vandals. 403 • 394 

43.— Attila the Hun. 435—457 ...... 404 

44.— Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457—561 ... 416 

45.— Belisarius. 533—563 425 

46.— Pope Gregory the Great. 563—800 ... 434 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The Pope's Doortender. (Frontispiece.) 


PAGE. 


The Tiber . 


o 14 


Curious Pottery . . 


15 


Jupiter 


. 17 


The Coast .-..'• 


23 


Mount Etna . 


. 25 


Carthage ...... 


28 


Roman Soldier .... 


. 30 


Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet 


34 


The Forum ..... 


. 37 


Janus ... ... 


41 


Actors ...... 


. 45 


Sybil's Cave . 


50 


Brutus condemning his sons 


. 57 


Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc 


63 


Head of Jupiter , 


. 68 


Female Costumes .... 


70 


Female Costumes . . . 


. 71 


Senatorial Palace .... 


79 



(viii.) 



JList of Illustrations. ix 

PAGE. 

View of a Roman Harbor . . • • .81 

.Roman Camp ...... 87 

Ploughing . . * • © . .89 

Death of Virginia . • 95 

Chariot Races . • . 98 

Arrow Machine .••«.. 102 
Siege Machine . . 105 

Ruins of the Forum at Rome. . . . Ill 

Entry of the Forum Romanian by the Yia Sacra . 117 

Costumes ...... . 120 

Costume ...... . 121 

Curtius leaping into the Gulf ..... 125 

The Apennines . . . . . . 129 

Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite . . 137 

Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite 137 
Ancient Rome ....... 141 

Pyrrhus ...... 145 

Roman Orator ....... 147 

Roman Ship ...... 153 

Roman Order of Battle ...... 159 

The wounded Gaul . 165 

Hannibal's Vow . ..... 168 

In the Pyrenees . ..... 170 

Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama . . . 173 

Archimedes ...•., 178 

Hannibal • ••••• . 184 

Corinth ....... 190 



Xo List of Illustrations. 

PAGE. 

Cornelia and her Sons c 196 

Roman Centurion „ 201 
Marius . . . . . . .205 

One of the Trophies, called of Marius, at the Capitol at 

Rome . . . . . o o 207 

The Catapult ...... 215 

Island on the Coast ...... 217 

Palazzo Yecchio, Florence .... 223 

Cornelius Sulla ...... 225 

Coast of Tyre . . . . . 231 

Mountains of Armenia ..... 235 

Cicero ....... 238 

Colossal Statue of Pompeius of the Palazzo Spada of 

Rome ...... 239 

Pompeius ....... 243 

Amphitheatre . . . . . 246 

The Arena ....... 247 

Julius Caesar ...... 253 

Cato 254 

Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium of the House 

of Julius Caesar at the Porta Capena in Rome . 255 

Marcus Antonius ..... 265 

Marcus Brutus , . . . . .268 

Alexandria. .,.,.. 270 
Caius Octavius . . . . . .272 

Statue of Augustus at the Vatican . . • 275 

Paintings in the House of Livia „ 281 



List of Illustrations. xi. 

PAGE. 

Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius . , e 287 

Agrippina . 290 

Rome in the time of Augustus Caesar . . . 293 

Claudius e 298 

Nero .... c •• 301 

Arch of Titus . . . . . 808 

Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A.D. 63 . 311 

Persecution of the Christians .... 314 

Coin of Nero ...... 316 

Temple of Antoninus and Faustina „ • . 319 

Marcus Aurelius . 325 

Septimus Severus ...... 327 

Antioch . . .. . .328 

Alexander Severus ........ 329 

Temple of the Sun at Palmyra . 332 

The Catacombs at Rome ..... 333 

Coin of Severus ...... 336 

Diocletian . . . . . . .338 

Diocletian in Retirement . 341 

Constantine the Great . 343 

Constantinople . 347 

Council of Nicea , 349 

Catacombs ..,..„ 352 

Julian ....... 357 

Arch of Constantine . 361 

Alexandria . . . . . • . 365 

Goths 367 



xii. List of Illustrations. 

PAGE. 

Convent on the Hills ...... 372 

Julian Alps. . . 375 

Roman Hall of Justice . . « . . 377 

Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome . . o 385 

Alaric's Burial . .;■•-.. 391 

Roman Clock . 396 

Spanish Coast 3 398 

Vandals plundering . 401 

Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt .... 403 

Hunnisli Camp ...... 405 

St. Mark's, Venice . . . . . .409 

The Pope's House . . . . .413 

Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown . , . 419 

Illustration ....... 423 

Naples ........ 427 

Constantinople. . . . . . 429 

Pope Gregory the Great , , . 435 

The Pope's Pulpit . 437 

Battle *f Tours . .443 



YOUNG FOLKS' HISTOEY OF KOME, 



CHAPTER I. 



ITALY. 



I AM going to tell you next about the most 
famous nation in the world. Going westward 
from Greece another peninsula stretches down into 
the Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run 
like a limb stretching out of the Alps to the south 
eastward, and on them seems formed that land, 
shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy. 
Round the streams that flowed down from these 
hills, valleys of fertile soil formed themselves, and 
a great many different tribes and people took up 
their abode there, before there was any history to 

explain their coming. Putting together what can 

13 



14 



Young Folks" History of Rome, 



be proved about them, it is plain, however, that 
most of them came of that old stock from which the 
Greeks descended, and to which we belong our- 
selves, and they spoke a language which had the 
same root as ours and as the Greek. From one of 
these nations the best known form of this, as it was 




THE TIBER. 



polished in later times, was called Latin, from the 
tribe who spoke it. 

About the middle of the peninsula there runs 
down, westward from the Apennines, a river called 
the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low hills, 
which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in 
esDecial, called the Palatine Hill, rose separately, 



Italy. 



15 



with a flat top and steep sides, about four hundred 
yards from the river, and girdled in by the other 
six. This was the place where the great Roman 
power grew up from beginnings, the truth of which 
cannot now be discovered. 

There were several nations living round these 
hills — the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins being 
the chief. The homes of these nations seem to 
^ave been in the valleys round the spurs of the 







CURIOUS POTTERY. 




Jf®$&W> 



Apennines, where they had farms and fed their 
flocks ; but above them was always the hill which 
they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where 
the}?- took refuge if their enemies attacked them. 
The Etruscans built very mighty walls, and also 
managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully 
well. Many of their works remain to this clay, and, 
in especial, their monuments have been opened, 



16 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned 
with figures of himself, half lying, half sitting ; also 
curious pottery in red and black, from which some- 
thing of their lives and ways is to be made out. 
They spoke a different language from what has 
become Latin, and they had a different religion, 
believing in one great Sdul of the World, and also 
thinking much of rewards and punishments after 
death. But we know hardly anything about them, 
except that their chiefs were called Lucumos, and 
that they once had a wide power which they had 
lost before the time of history. The Romans called 
them Tusci, and Tuscany still keeps its name. 

The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and 
also more like the Greeks. There were a great 
many settlements of Greeks in the southern parts 
of Italy, and they learnt something from them. 
They had a great many gods. Every house had 
its own guardian. These were called Lares, or 
Penates, and were generally represented as little 
figures of dogs lying by the hearth, or as brass 
bars with dogs' heads. This is the reason that the 
bars which close in an open hearth are still called 
dogs. Whenever there was a meal in the house 
the master began by pouring out wine to the 
Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he 



Italy. 17 

kept figures ; for these natives thought much of 
their families, and all one family had the same 
name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius, 
the daughters only changing it by making it end 




JUPITER. 

in a instead of us, and the men having separate 
names standing first, such as Marcus or Lucius, 
though their sisters were only numbered to dis- 
tinguish them. 



18 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its 
nymph, each wood its faun ; also there were gods 
to whom the boundary stones of estates were 
dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called 
Pomona, and a god of fruits named Vertumnus. 
In their names the fields and the crops were sol- 
emnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, 
according to the old legends, had first taught hus- 
bandry, and when he reigned in Italy there was a 
golden age, when every one had his own field, 
lived by his own handiwork, and kept no slaves. 
There was a feast in honor of this time every year 
called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the 
slaves were all allowed to act as if they were free, 
and have all kinds of wild sports and merriment. 
Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn 
was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, 
who devours his offspring, and the reaping-hook 
his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's 
scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or 
father), was shortened into Jupiter; Juno was his 
wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek 
times was supposed to be the same as Ares ; Pallas 
Athene was joined with the Latin Minerva ; Hestia, 
the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta : and, 
in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin 



Italy. 19 

names. The old Greek tales were not known to 
the Latins in their first times, but only afterwards 
learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have 
thought of their gods as graver, higher beings, 
further off, and less capricious and fanciful than the 
legends about the weather had made them seem to 
the Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, 
tougher, graver, fiercer, more business-like race al- 
together than the Greeks ; not so clever, thought- 
ful, or poetical, but with more of what we should 
now call sterling stuff in them. 

At least so it was with that great nation which 
spoke their language, and seems to have been an 
offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is 
said to mean the famous, is thought to have been 
at first a cluster of little villages, with forts to pro- 
tect them on the hills, and temples in the forts. 
Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with 
cells for his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva ; 
and the two-faced Janus, the god of gates, had his 
upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were 
the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the 
Caelian, and the Quirinal. The people of these vil- 
lages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen, 
when they formed themselves into an army and 
made war on their neighbors, the Sabines and 



20 Young Folks' History of Home* 

Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing all the 
seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free 
from houses, where sacrifices were offered and 
omens sought for. 

The history of these people was not written till 
long after they had grown to be a mighty and ter- 
rible power, and had also picked up many Greek 
notions. Then they seem to have made their his- 
tory backwards, and worked up their old stories 
and songs to explain the names and customs they 
found among them, and the tales they told were 
formed into a great history by one Titus Livius. 
It is needful to know these stories which every 
one used to believe to be really history ; so we will 
tell them first, beginning, however, with a story 
told by the poet Virgil. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE WANDERINGS OF JENEAS. 

YOU remember in the Greek history the burn- 
ing of Troy, and how Priam and all his 
family were cut off. Among the Trojans there 
was a prince called JEneas, whose father was An- 
chises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was said 
to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the 
city was lost, he rushed back to his house, and 
took his old father Anchises on his back, giving 
him his Penates, or little images of household gods, 
to take care of, and led by the hand his little son 
lulus, or Ascanius, while his wife Creusa followed 
close behind, and all the Trojans who could get 
their arms together joined him, so that they es- 
caped in a body to Mount Ida; but just as they 
were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and 
though he rushed back and searched for her every- 

21 



22 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

where, lie never could find her. For the sake of 
his care for his gods, and for his old father, he is 
always known as the pious iEneas. 

In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough 
to set forth with all his followers in quest of the 
new home which his mother, the goddess Venus, 
gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather 
like those of Ulysses as he saile*d about the Medi- 
terranean. Once in the Strophades, some clusters 
belonging to the Ionian Islands, when he and his 
troops had landed to get food, and were eating the 
flesh of the numerous goats which they found 
climbing about the rocks, down on them came the 
harpies, horrible birds with women's faces and 
hooked hands, with which they snatched away the 
food and spoiled what they could not eat. The 
Trojans shot at them, but the arrows glanced off 
their feathers and did not hurt them. However, 
they all flew off except one, who sat on a high 
rock, and croaked out that the Trojans would be 
punished for thus molesting the harpies by being 
tossed about till they should reach Italy, but there 
they should not build their city till they should 
have been so hungry as to eat their very trenchers. 

They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, 
and touched on the coast of Epirus, where iEneas 



The Wanderings of JEneas. 23 

found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam, reign- 
ing over a little new Troy, and married to Andro- 
mache, Hector's wife, whom he had gained after 
Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was a prophet, 




THE COAST. 



and gave JEneas much advice. In especial he liaid 
that when the Trojans should come to Italy, they 
would find, under the holly-trees by the river side, 
A large white old sow lying on the ground, with a 
litter of thirty little pigs round her, and this should 



24 Young Folks' History of Home. 

be a sign to them where they were to build their 
city. 

By hi$ advice the Trojans coasted round the 
south of Sicily, instead of trying to pass the strait 
between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and 
just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came 
running down to the beach begging to be taken in. 
He was a Greek, who had been left behind when 
Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had 
made his way to the forests, where he had lived 
ever since. They had just taken him in when 
thej r saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree 
for a staff, to wash the burning hollow of his lost 
eye in the sea, and they rowed off in great terror. 

Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while 
his son was still sorrowing for him, Juno, who 
hated every Trojan, stirred up a terrible tempest, 
which drove the ships to the south, until, just as 
the sea began to calm down, they came into a beau- 
tiful bay, enclosed by tall cliffs with woods over- 
hanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed, 
and, lighting a fire, iEneas went in quest of food. 
Coming out of the forest, they looked down from 
a hill, and beheld a multitude of people building a 
city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. 
Into one of these temples JEneas entered, and to 



The Wanderings of JEneas. 27 

his amazement he found the walls sculptured with 
all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his 
friends so perfectly represented, that he burst into 
tears at the sight. 

Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whol3 
troop of nymphs, came into the temple. This lady 
was Dido ; her husband, Sichseus, had been king of 
Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygma- 
lion, who meant to have married her, but she fled 
from him with a band of faithful Tyrians and all 
her husband's treasure, and had landed on the 
north coast of Africa. There she begged of the 
chief of the country as much land as could be en- 
closed by a bullock's hide. He granted this read- 
ily ; and Dido, cutting the hide into the finest pos- 
sible strips, managed to measure off with it ground 
enough to build the splendid city which she had 
named Carthage. She received JEneas most kind- 
ly, and took all his men into her city, hoping to 
keep them there for ever, and make him her hus- 
band. iEneas himself was so happy there, that he 
forgot all his plans and the prophecies he had 
heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him to 
fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call ; and Dido 
was so wretched at his departure that she caused a 
great funeral pile to be built, laid herself on the 



28 



Young 1'olks' History of Rome. 



top, and stabbed herself with iEneas' sword ; the 
pile was burnt, and the Trojan's saw the flame from 
their ships without knowing the cause. 

By-and-by iEneas landed at a place in Italy 
named Cuniae. There dwelt one of the Sybilsc 



*£^ 




CARTHAGE. 



These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had 
endowed with deep wisdom ; and when iEneas 
went to consult the Cumsean Sybil, she told him 
that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to 
learn his fate. First, however, he had to go into 
a forest, and find there and gather a golden bough, 
which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. 



The Wanderings of JEneas. 29 

Long he sought it, until two doves, his mother's 
birds, came flying before him to show him the tree 
where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he 
found the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe 
grows on the thorn. 

Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, 
after a great sacrifice, iEneas passed into a gloomy 
cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which 
flitted all the shades who had never received fu- 
neral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would 
not carry over. The Sybil, however, made him 
take ^Eneas across, his boat groaning under the 
weight of a human body. On the other side stood 
Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him a cake of honey 
and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while JEneas 
passed on and found in myrtle groves all who had 
died for love, among them, to his surprise, poor 
forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the 
home of the warriors, and held converse with his 
old Trojan friends. He passed by the place of 
doom for the wicked, Tartarus ; and in the Elysian 
fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, 
he found the spirit of his father Anchises, and with 
him was allowed to see the souls of all their de- 
scendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the 
glory of their name. They are described on to the 



30 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

very time when the poet wrote to whom we owe 
all the tale of the wanderings of iEneas, namely, 
Virgil, who wrote the JEneid, whence all these 
stories are taken. He further tells us that iEneas 
landed in Italy just as his old nurse Caieta died, at 
the place which is still called Gaeta. After they 
had buried her, they found a grove, w T here they 
sat down on the grass to eat, using large round 
aakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently 
they came to eating up the cakes. Little Ascanius 
cried out, " We are eating our very tables ; " and 
iEneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that 
his wanderings were over. 



ROMAN SOLDIEK. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FOUNDING OF BOME. 
B.C. 753—713. 

VIRGIL goes on to tell at much length how 
the king of the country, Latinus, at first 
made friends with JEneas, and promised him his 
daughter Lavinia in marriage ; but Turnus, an 
Italian chief who had before been a suitor to La* 
vinia, stirred up a great war, and was only cap- 
tured and killed after much hard fighting. How- 
ever, the white sow was found in the right place 
with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded 
the city of Alba Longa, where ^Eneas and Lavinia 
reigned until he died, and his descendants, through 
his two sons, Ascanius or lulus, and iEneas Silvius, 
reigned after him for fifteen generations. 

The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took 

the throne from his brother Numitor, who had a 
31 



32 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin* 
In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta 
was tended by good men, but in Italy it was the 
charge of maidens, who were treated with great 
honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain 
of death. So there was great anger when Rhea 
Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and, more 
over, said that her husband was the god Mara. 
But Mars did not save her from being buried alive, 
while the two babes were put in a trough on the 
waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The 
river had overflowed its banks, and left the chil- 
dren on dry ground, where, however, they were 
found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them 
/ike her own offspring, until a shepherd met with 
theai and took them home to his wife. She called 
them Romulus and Remus, and bred them up as 
shepherds. 

When the twin brothers were growing into man- 
hood, there was a fight between the shepherds of 
Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and 
Remus did such brave feats that they were led be- 
fore Numitor. He enquired into their birth, and 
their foster-father told the story of his finding 
them, showing the trough in which they had been^ 
laid ; and thus it became plain that they were the 



The Founding of Rome. 3 

grandsons of Numitor. On finding this out, they 
collected an army, with which they drove away 
Amnlius, and brought their grandfather back to 
Alba Longa. 

They then resolved to build a new city for them- 
selves on one of the seven low hills beneath which 
ran the yellow river Tiber ; but they were not 
agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to 
build on the Aventine Hill, and Romulus on the 
Palatine. Their grandfather advised them to 
watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on 
his hill and watched for birds. Remus was the 
first to see six vultures flying, but Romulus saw 
twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made 
the beginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen 
king. Remus was affronted, and when the mud 
wall was being raised around the space intended 
for the city, he leapt over it and laughed, where- 
upon Romulus struck him dead, crying out, " So 
perish all who leap over the walls of my city." 

Romulus traced out the form of the city with 
the plough, and made it almost a square. He 
called the name of it Rome, and lived in the 
midst of it in a mud hovel, covered with thatch, in 
the midst of about fifty families of the old Trojan 
race, and a great many young men, outlaws and 



34 



Young Folks* History of Rome. 



runaways from the neighboring states, who had 
joined him. The date of the building of Rome 
was supposed to be A.d. 753 ; and the Romans 
counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from 
the Olympiads, marking the date A.U.C., anno urbis 
conditce^ the year of the city being built. The 




GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET. 



youths who joined Romulus could not marry, as no 
one of the neighboring nations would give his 
daughter to one of these robbers, as they^were es- 
teemed. The nearest neighbors to Rome were the 
Sabines, and the Romans cast their eyes in vain on 
the Sabine ladies, till old Numitor advised Romulus 



The Founding of Rome. 35 

to proclaim a great feast in honor of Neptune^ 
with games and dances. All the people in the 
country round came to it, and when the revelry 
was at its height each of the unwedded Romans 
seized on a Sabine maiden and carried her away to 
his own house. Six hundred and eighty-three girls 
were thus seized, and the next day Romulus mar- 
ried them all after the fashion ever after observed 
in Rome. There was a great sacrifice, then each 
damsel was told, " Partake of your husband's fire 
and water ; " he gave her a ring, and carried her 
over his threshhold, where a sheepskin was spread, 
to show that her duty would be to spin wool for 
him, and she became his wife. 

Romulus himself won his own wife, Hersilia, 
among the Sabines on this occasion ; but the nation 
of course took up arms, under their king Tatius, to 
recover their daughters. Romulus drew out his 
troops into Campus Martins, or field of Mars, just 
beneath the Capitol, or great fort on the Saturnian 
Hill, and marched against the Sabines ; but while 
he was absent, Tarpeia, the daughter of the gover* 
nor of the little fort he had left on the Saturnian 
Hill, promised to let the Sabines in on condition 
they would give her what they wore on their left 
arms, meaning their bracelets ; but they hated her 



36 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

treason even while they took advantage of it, and 
no sooner were they within the gate than they 
pelted her with their heavy shields, which they 
wore on their left arms, and killed her. The cliff 
on the top of which she died is still called the Tar- 
peian rock, and criminals were executed by being 
thrown from the top of it. Romulus tried to regain 
the Capitol, but the Sabines rolled down stones on 
the Romans, and he was stunned by one that struck 
him on the head ; and though he quickly recovered 
and rallied his men, the battle was going against 
him, when all the Sabine women, who had been 
nearly two years Roman wives, came rushing out, 
with their little children in their arms and their hair 
flying, begging their fathers and husbands not to 
kill one another. This led to the making of a 
peace, and it was agreed that the Sabines and 
Romans should make but one nation, and that 
Romulus and Tatius should reign together at Rome. 
Romulus lived on the Palatine Hill, Tatius on the 
Tarpeian, and the valley between was called the 
Forum, and was the market-place, and also the spot 
where all public assemblies were held. All the 
chief arrangements for war and government were 
believed by the Romans to have been laws of 
Romulus. However, after five years, Tatius was 



The Founding of Rome. 



37 



murdered at a place called Lavinium, in the middle 
of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone till in the 
middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside 
the city, a storm of thunder and lightning came on, 
and every one hurried home, but the king was 
n< vhere to be found ; for, as some say, his father 




THE FORUM. 



Mars had come down in the tempest and carried 
him away to reign with the gods, while others de- 
clared that he was murdered by persons, each of 
whom carried home a fragment of his body that it 
might never be found. It matters less which way 
we tell it, since the story of Romulus was quite as 



38 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

much a fable as that of iEneas ; only it must be 
remembered as the Romans themselves believed it. 
They worshipped Romulus under the name of 
Quirinus, and called their chief families Quirites, 
both words coming from ger (a spear) ; and the 
she-wolf and twins were the favorite badge of the 
empire. The Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, and the 
Forum all still bear the same names. 




CHAPTER IV. 

NUMA AND TULLTJS. 
B.C. 713— 618. 

FT was understood between the Romans and the 
-*- Sabines that they should have by turns a king 
from each nation, and, on the disappearance of 
Romulus, a Sabine was chosen, named Numa Pom- 
pilius, who had been married to Tatia, the daughter 
of the Sabine king Tatius, but she was dead, and 
had left one daughter. Numa had, ever since her 
death, been going about from one grove or fountain 
sacred to the gods to another offering up sacrifices, 
and he was much beloved for his gentleness and 
wisdom. There was a grove near Rome, in a val- 
ley, where a fountain gushed forth from the rock ; 
and here Egeria, the nymph of the stream, in the 
shade of the trees, counselled Numa on his govern- 



40 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

ment, which was so wise that he lived at peace 
with all his neighbors. When the Romans doubted 
whether it was really a. goddess who inspired him, 
Egeria convinced them, for the next time he had 
any guests in his house, the earthenware plates 
with homely fare on them were changed before 
their eyes into golden dishes with dainty food. 
Moreover, there was brought from heaven a bronze 
shield, which was to be carefully kept, since Rome 
would never fall while it was safe. Numa had 
eleven other shields like it made and hung in the 
temple of Mars, and, yearly, a set of men dedicated 
to the office bore them through the city with songs 
and dances. Just as all warlike customs were said 
to have been invented by Romulus, all peaceful and 
religious ones were held to have sprung from 
Nurna and his Egeria. He was said to have fixed 
the calendar and invented the names of the months, 
and to have built an altar to Good Faith to teach 
the Romans to keep their word to one another and 
to all nations, and to have dedicated the bounds of 
each estate to the Dii Termini, or Landmark Gods, 
in whose honor there was a feast yearly. He also 
was said to have had such power with Jupiter as to 
have persuaded him to be content without receiving 
sacrifices of men and women. In short, all the 



Numa and Tullus. 



41 



better things in the Roman system were supposed 
to be due to the gentle Numa. 

At the gate called Janiculum stood a temple to 
the watchman god, Janus, whose figure had two 
faces, and held the keys, and after whom was 
lamed the month January. His temple was al- 
ways open in time of war, and closed in time of 
peace. Numa's reign was counted as the first out 
rf only three times in 
Roman history that it 
was shut. 

Numa was said to 
have reigned thirty-eight 
years, and then he grad- 
ually faded away, and 
was buried in a stone 
coffin outside the Janic- 
ular gate, all the books 
he had written being, 
\j his desire, buried 
vvith him. Egeria wept till she became a fountain 
in her own valley ; and so ended what in Roman 
Faith answered to the golden age of Greece. 

The next king was of Roman birth, and was 
named Tullus Hostilius. He was a great warrior, 
and had a war with the Albans until it was agreed 




JAUTJg. 



42 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

that the two cities should join together in one, as 
the Romans and Sabines had done before ; but 
there was a dispute which should be the greater 
city in the league, and it was determined to settle 
it by a combat. In each city there was a family 
where three sons had been born at a birth, and 
their mothers were sisters. Both sets were of the 
same age — fine young men, skilled in weapons ; 
and it Avas agreed that the six should fight together, 
the three whose family name was Horatius on the 
Roman side, the. three called Curiatius on the Al- 
ban side, and whichever set gained the mastery 
was to give it to his city. 

They fought in the plain between the camps, 
and very hard was the strife until two of the 
Horatii were killed and all the three Curiatii 
were wounded, but the last Horatius was entirely 
untouched. He began to run, and his cousins pur- 
sued him, but at different distances, as one was less 
hindered by his wound than the others. As soon 
as the first came up, Horatius slew him, and so the 
second and the third ; as he cut clown this last he 
cried out, " To the glory of Rome I sacrifice thee." 
As the Alban king saw his champion fall, he turned 
to Tullus Hostilius and asked what his commands 



Numa and Tullus. 43 

were. " Only to have the Alban youth ready when 
I need them," said Tullus. 

A wreath was set on the victor's head, and, loaded 
with the spoil of the Curiatii, he was led into the 
city in triumph. His sister came hurrying to meet 
him ; she was betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and 
was in agony to know his fate ; and when she saw 
the garment she had spun for him hanging blood- 
stained over her brother's shoulders, she burst into 
loud lamentations. Horatius, still hot Avith fury, 
struck her dead on the spot, crying, " So perish 
every Roman who mourns the death of an enemy 
of his country." Even her father approved the 
cruel deed, and would not bury her in his family 
tomb — so stern were Roman feelings, putting the 
honor of the country above everything. How- 
ever, Horatius was brought before the king for the 
murder, and was sentenced to die ; but the people 
entreated that their champion might be spared, and 
he was only made to pass under what was called 
the yoke, namely, spears set up like a doorway. 

Tullus Hostilius gained several victories over his 
neighbors, but he was harsh and presuming, and 
offended the gods, and, when he was using some 
spell such as good Numa had used to hold con- 
verse with Jupiter, the angry god sent lightning 



44 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

and burnt up him and his family. The people 
• then chose Ancus Martins, the son of Numa's 
daughter, who is said to have ruled in his grand- 
father's spirit, though he could not avoid wars 
with the Latins. The first bridge over the Tiber, 
named the Sublician, was said to have been built 
by him. In his time there came to Rome a family 
called Tarquin. Their father was a Corinthian, 
who had settled in an Etruscan town named Tar- 
quinii, whence came the family name. He was 
said to have first taught writing in Italy, and, in- 
deed, the Roman letters which we still use are 
Greek letters made simpler. His eldest son, find- 
ing that because of his foreign blood he could rise 
to no honors in Etruria, set off with his wife Tana- 
quil, and their little son Lucius Tarquinius, to set- 
tle in Rome. Just as they came in sight of Rome, 
an. eagle swooped down from the sky, snatched off 
little Tarquin's cap, and flew up with it, but the 
next moment came down again and put it back on 
his head. On this Tanaquil foretold that her son 
would be a great king, and he became so famous 
a warrior when he grew up, that, as the children of 
Ancus were too young to reign at their father's 
death, he was chosen king. He is said to have 
been the first Roman king who wore a purple robe 



Numa and Tullus. 



45 



and golden crown, and in the valley between the 
Palatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, 
wdiere games could be held like those of the 
Greeks ; also he placed stone benches and stalls for 
shops round the Forum, and built a stone wall in- 
stead of a mud one round the city. He is com- 
monly called Tarquinus Priscus, or the elder. 







There was a fair slave girl in his house, who was 
offering cakes to Lar, the household spirit, when 
he appeared to her in bodily form. When she told 
the king's mother, Tanaquil, she said it was a 
token that he wanted to marry her, and arrayed 



46 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

her as a bride for him. Of this marriage there 
sprang a boy called Servius Tullus. When this 
child lay asleep, bright flames played about his 
head, and Tanaquil knew he would be great, so 
she caused her son Tarquin to give him his daugh- 
ter in marriage when he grew up. This greatly 
offended the two sons of Ancus Martins, and they 
hired two young men to come before him as wood- 
cutters, with axes over their shoulders, pretending 
to have a quarrel about some goats, and while he 
was listening to their cause they cut him down and 
mortally wounded him. He had lost his sons, and 
had only- two baby grandsons, Aruns and Tarquin, 
who could not reign as yet ; but while he was 
dying, Tanaquil stood at the window and declared 
that he was only stunned and would soon be well. 
This, as she intended, so frightened the sons of 
Ancus that they fled from Rome; and Servius 
Tullus, coming forth in the royal robes, was at once 
hailed as king by all the people of Rome, being 
thus made king that he might protect his wife's 
two young nephews, the two little Tarquins. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQTJIKS. 
B.C. 578—309. 

SERVIUS TULLUS was looked on by the 
Romans as having begun making their laws, 
as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, 
and Numa had settled their religion. The Romans 
were all in great clans or families, all with one 
name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler 
ones, who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, 
or Sabine families, were called Patricians — from 
pater, a father — because they were fathers of th« 
people ; and the other families were called Plebeian, 
ivom plebs, the people. The patricians formed thu 
Senate or Council of Government, and rode on 
horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. 
They had spears, round shields, and short pointed 
i words, which cut on each side of the blade. 
47 



48 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each 
tribe should be called out to war. He also walled 
iii the city again with a wall five miles round ; and 
he made many fixed laws, one being that when a 
man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he 
himself might not be made a slave. He was the 
great friend of the plebeians, and first established 
the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be 
made without the consent of the Comitia, or whole 
free people. 

The Sabines and Romans were still striving for 
the mastery, and a husbandman among the Sabines 
had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An oracle de- 
clared that the man who sacrificed this cow to 
Diana upon the Aventine Hill would secure the 
chief power to his nation. The Sabine drove the 
cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a 
crafty Roman priest told him that he must first 
wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he was gone 
sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured 
the rule to Rome. The great horns of the cow 
were long after shown in the temple of Diana on 
the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins 
every year joined in a great sacrifice. 

The two daughters of Servius were married to 
their cousins, the two young Tarquins. In each 



The Driving out of the Tarquins. 49 

pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. The 
fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tar- 
quin; the gentle Tulla had married the proud 
Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade 
her husband to seize the throne that had belonged 
to his father, and when he would not listen to her, 
she agreed with his brother Lucius that, while he 
murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, 
and then that they should marry. The horrid deed 
was carried out, and old Servius, seeing what a 
wicked pair were likely to come after him, began 
to consider with the Senate whether it would not 
be better to have two consuls or magistrates chosen 
every year than a king. This made Lucius Tar- 
quin the more furious, and going to the Senate, 
where the patricians hated the king as the friend 
of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was 
beginning to tell the patricians that this would be 
the ruin of their greatness, when Servius came in 
and, standing on the steps of the doorway, ordered 
him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old 
man and hurled him backward, so that the fall 
killed him, and his body was left in the street. 
The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her hus- 
band had sped, came out in her chariot on that 
road. The horses gave back before the corpse. 



50 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



She asked what was in their way ; the slave who 
drove her told her it was the king's body. " Drive 
on," she said. The horrid deed caused the street 
to be known ever after as " Sceleratus," or the 
wicked. But it was the plebeians who mourned 




SYBIL'S CAVE. 



for Servius; the patricians in their anger made 
Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruel 
master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius 
Superbus, or Tarquin the proud. In his time the 



The Driving out of the Tarquins. 51 

Sybil of Cumae, the same wondrous maiden of deep 
wisdom who had guided JEneas to the realms of 
Pluto, came, bringing nine books of prophecies of 
the history of Rome, and offered them to him 
at a price which he thought too high, and refused. 
She went away, destroyed three, and brought back 
the other six, asking for them double the price of 
the whole, He refused. She burnt three more, 
and brought him the last three with the price again 
doubled, because the fewer they were, the more 
precious. He bought them at last, and placed them 
in the Capitol, whence they were now and then 
taken to be consulted as oracles. 

Rome was at war with the city of Gabii, and as 
the city was not to be subdued by force, Tarquin 
tried treachery. His eldest son, Sextus Tarqninius, 
fled to Gabii, complaining of ill-usage of his father, 
and showing marks of a severe scourging. The 
Gabians believed him, and he was soon so much 
trusted by them as to have the whole command of 
the army and manage everything in the city. Then 
he sent a messenger to his father to ask what he 
was to do next. Tarquin was walking through a 
cornfield. He made no answer in words, but with 
a switch cut off the heads of all the poppies and 
taller stalks of corn, and bade the messenger teU 



52 Young Folks'' History of Rome. 

Sextus what he had seen. Sextus understood, and 
contrived to get all the chief men of Gabii exiled 
or put to death, and without them the city fell an 
easy prey to the Romans. 

Tarquin sent his two younger sons and their 
cousin to consult the oracle at Delphi, and with 
them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutus 
because he was supposed to be foolish, that being 
the meaning of the word ; but his folly was only 
put on, because he feared the jealously of his 
cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two 
Tarquins asked who should rule Rome after their 
father. " He," said the priestess, "who shall first 
kiss his mother on his return." The two brothers 
agreed that they would keep this a secret from their 
elder brother Sextus, and, as soon as they reached 
home, both of them rushed into the women's rooms, 
racing each to be the first to embrace their mother 
Tullia ; but at the very entrance of Rome Brutus 
pretended to slip, threw himself on the ground and 
kissed his Mother Earth, having thus guessed the 
right meaning of the answer. 

He waited patiently, however, and still was 
thought a fool when the army went out to besiege 
the city of Ardea ; and while the troops were en- 
camped round it, some of the young patricians be- 



The Driving out of the Tarquins. 53 

gan to dispute which had the best wife. They 
agreed to put it to the test by galloping late in the 
evening to look in at their homes and see what 
their wives were about. Some were idling, some 
were visiting, some were scolding, some were dress- 
ing, some were asleep ; but at Collatia, the farm of 
another of the Tarquin family, thence called Col- 
latinus, they found his beautiful wife Lucretia 
among her maidens spinning the wool of the flocks. 
All agreed that she was the best of wives ; but the 
wicked Sextus Tarquin only wanted to steal her 
from her husband, and going by night to Collatia, 
tried to make her desert her lord, and when she 
would not listen to him he ill-treated her cruelly, 
and told her that he should accuse her to her hus- 
band. She was so overwhelmed with grief and 
shame that in the morning she sent for her father 
and husband, told them all that that happened, and 
saying that she could not bear life after being so put 
to shame, she drew out a dagger and stabbed her- 
self before their eyes — thinking, as all these hea- 
then Romans did, that it was better to die by one's 
own hand than to live in disgrace. 

Lucius Brutus had gone to Collatia with his 
cousin, and while Collatinus and his father-in-law 
stood horror-struck, he called to them to revenge 



54 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



this crime. Snatching the dagger from Lucretia's 
breast, he galloped to Rome, called the people to- 
gether in the Forum, and, holding up the bloody 
weapon in his hand, he made them a speech, asking 
whether they would any longer endure such a family 
of tyrants. They all rose as one man, and choosing 
Brutus himself and Collatinus to be their leaders, 
as the consuls whom Servius Tullus had thought of 
making, they shut the gates of Rome, and would 
not open them when Tarquin and his sons would 
have returned. So ended the kingdom of Kama. 




CHAPTER VI. 

THE WAR, WITH PORSEKA. 

FROM the time of the flight of the Tarquins, 
Rome was governed by two consuls, who 
wore ail the tokens of royalty except the crown. 
Tarquin fled into Etruria, whence his grandfather 
had come, and thence tried to obtain admission into 
Rome. The two young sons of Brutus and the 
nephews of Collatinus were drawn into a plot for 
bringing them back again, and on its discovery 
were brought before the two consuls. Their guilt 
was proved, and their father sternly asked what 
they had to say in their defence. They only wept, 
and so did Collatinus and many of the senators, 
crying out, " Banish them, banish them." Brutus, 
however, as if unmoved, bade the executioners do 
their office. The whole Senate shrieked to hear a 
father thus condemn his own children, but he was 
55 



56 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

resolute, and actually looked on while the young 
men were first scourged and then beheaded. 

Collatinus put off the further judgment in hopes 
to save his nephews, and Brutus told them that he 
had put them to death by his own power as a father, 
but that he left the rest to the voice of the people, 
and they were sent into banishment. Even Col- 
latinus was thought to have acted weakly, and was 
sent into exile — so determined were the Romans 
to have no one among them who would not uphold 
their decrees to the utmost. Tarquin advanced to 
the walls and cut down all the growing corn around 
the Campus Martius and threw it into the Tiber ; 
there it formed a heap round which an island was 
afterwards formed. Brutus himself and his cousin 
Aruns Tarquin soon after killed one another in 
single combat in a battle outside the walls, and all 
the women of Rome mourned for him as for a 
father. 

Tarquin found a friend in the Etruscan king 
called Lars Porsena, who brought an army to be- 
siege Rome and restore him to the throne. He 
advanced towards the gate called Janiculum upon 
the Tiber, and drove the Romans out of the fort on 
the other side the river. The Romans then re- 
treated across the bridge, placing three men to 




BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS. 



57 



The War with Porsena. 59 

guard it until all should be gone over and it could 
be broken down. 

There stood the brave three — Horatius, Lartius., 
and Herminius — guarding the bridge while theii 
fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three men 
against a whole army. At last the weapons of 
Lartius and Herminius were broken down, and 
Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while 
it could still bear their weight. He himself fought 
on till he was wounded in the thigh, and the last 
timbers of the bridge were falling into the stream. 
Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father 
Tiber to receive him, leapt into the river and swam 
across amid a shower of arrows, one of which put 
out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statue of 
him "halting on his thigh" was set up in the tem- 
ple of Vulcan, and he was rewarded with as much 
land as one yoke of oxen could plough in a day, 
and the 300,000 citizens of Rome each gave him a 
day's provision of corn. 

Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the 
Romans were nearly starving he sent them word 
that he would give them food if they would receive 
their old masters ; but they made answer that 
hunger was better than slavery, and still held out. 
In the midst of their distress, a young man named 



60 Young Folks' History of Rome-. 

Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the con 
suls to cross the Tiber and go to attempt something 
to deliver his country. They gave leave, and 
creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into 
the king's tent just as Porsena was watching his 
troops pass by in full order. One of his counsellors' 
was sitting beside him so richly dressed that Mucius 
did not know which was king, and leaping towards 
them, he stabbed the counsellor to the heart. He 
was seized at once and dragged before the king, 
who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant 
by such a crime. 

The young man answered that his name was Caius 
Mucius, and that he was ready to do and dare any- 
thing for Rome. In answer to threats of torture, 
he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust 
it into the flame that burnt in a brazier close by, 
holding it there without a sign of pain, while he 
bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering. 

Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the 
daring man. his life, his freedom, and even his dag- 
ger ; and Mucius then told him that three hundred 
youths like himself had sworn to have his life un- 
less he left Rome to her liberty. This was false, 
but both the lie and the murder were for Rome's 
sake ; they were both admired by the Romans, who 



The War with Porsena. 61 

held that the welfare of their city was their very 
first duty. Mucius could never use his right hand 
again, and was always called Scaevola, or the Left- 
handed, a name that went on to his family. 

Porsena believed the story, and began to make 
peace. A truce was agreed on, and ten Roman 
youths and as many girls were given up to the 
Etruscans as hostages. While the conferences 
were going on, one of the Roman girls named 
Clelia forgot her duty so much as to swim home 
across the river with all her companions ; but Val- 
eria, the consul's daughter, was received with all 
the anger that breach of trust deserved, and her 
father mounted his horse at once to take the party 
back again. Just as they reached the Etruscan 
camp, the Tarquin father and brothers, and a whole 
troop of the enemy, fell on them. While the con- 
sul was fighting against a terrible force, Valeria 
dashed on into the camp and called out Porsena 
and his son. They, much grieved that the truce 
should have been broken, drove back their own 
men, and were so angry with the Tarquins as to 
give up their cause. He asked which of the girls 
had contrived the escape, and when Clelia confessed 
it was herself, he made her a present of a fine horse 
and its trappings, which she little deserved. 



62 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

This Valerius was called Publicola, or the peo- 
ple's friend. He died a year or two later, after so 
many victories that the Romans honored him 
among their greatest heroes. Tarquin still contin- 
ued to seek support among the different Italian 
nations, and again attacked the Romans with the 
help of the Latins. The chief battle was fought 
close to Lake Regillus ; Aulus Posthumius was the 
commander, but Marcus Valerius, brother to Pub- 
licola, was general of the horse. He had yowecl to 
build a temple to Castor and Pollux if the Romans 
gained the victory; and in the beginning of the 
fight, two glorious youths of god-like stature ap- 
peared on horseback at the head of the Roman 
horse and fought for them, It was a very hard- 
fought battle. Valerius was killed, but so was 
Titus Tarquin, and the Latin force was entirely 
broken and routed. That same evening the two 
youths rode into the Forum, their horses dripping 
with sweat and their weapons bloody. They drew 
up and washed themselves at a fountain near the 
temple of Vesta, and as the people crowded round 
they told of the great victory, and while one man 
named Domitius doubted of it, since the Lake 
Regillus was too far off for tidings to have come so 
fast, one of them laid his hand on the doubter's 




ROMAN ENSIGNS. STANDARDS. TRUMPETS. ETC, 



The War with Porsena. 65 

beard and changed it in a moment from black to 
copper color, so that he came to be called Domitius 
Ahenobarbus, or Brazen-beard. Then they disap- 
peared, and the next morning Posthumius' mes- 
senger brought ^the news. The Romans had no 
doubt that these were indeed the glorious twins, 
and built their temple, as Valerius had vowed. 

Tarquin had lost all his sons, and died in wretch- 
ed exile at Cumse. And here ends what is looked 
on as the legendary history of Rome, for though 
most of these stories have dates, and some sound 
possible, there is so much that is plainly untrue 
mixed up with them, that they can only be looked 
on as the old stories which were handed down to 

account for the Roman customs and copied by their 

m 
historians. 




CHAPTER VII. 

THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT. 

^* O far as true history can guess, the Romans 

^-^ r°ally did have kings and drove them out, 

but there are signs that, though Porsena Avas a real 

king, the war was not so honorable to the Romans 

as they said, for he took the city and made them 

give up all their weapons to him, leaving them 

nothing but their tools for husbandry. But they 

liked to forget their misfortunes. 

The older Roman families were called patricians, 

or fathers, and thought all rights to govern belonged 

to them. Settlers who came in later were called 

plebeians, or the people, and at first had no rights 

at all, for all the land belonged to the patricians, 

and the only way for the plebeians to get anything 

done for them was to become hangers-on — or, as 
m 



The Roman Grovernment. 67 

they called it, clients — of some patrician who took 
care of their interests. There was a council of pa- 
tricians called the Senate, chosen among themselves, 
and also containing by right all who had been chief 
magistrates. The whole assembly of the patricians 
was called the Comitia. They, as has been said 
before, fought on horseback, while the plebeians 
fought on foot ; but out of the rich plebeians a 
body was formed called the knights, who also used 
horses, and wore gold rings like the patricians. 

But the plebeians were always trying not to be 
left out of everything. By and by, they said under 
Servius Tullius, the city was divided into six quar- 
ters, and all the families living in them into six 
tribes, each of which had a tribune to watch over it, 
bring up the number of its men, and lead them to 
battle. Another division of the citizens, both pa- 
trician and plebeian, was made every five years. 
They were all counted and numbered and divided 
off into centuries according to their wealth. Then 
these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the 
persons they chose, when it was a question of peace 
or war. Their meeting was called the Comitia; 
but as there were more patrician centuries than 
plebeian ones, the patricians still had much more 
power. Besides, the Senate and all the magistrates 



68 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



were in those days always patricians. These magis- 
trates were chosen every year. There were two 
consuls, who were like kings for the time, only that 
they wore no crowns ; they had purple robes, and 
sat in chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were 
always attended by lictors, who carried bundles of 




HEAD OF JUPITER. 



rods tied round an axe — the first for scourging, 
the second for beheading. There were under them 
two praetors, or judges, who tried offences ; two 
quaestors, who attended to the public buildings; 
and two censors, who had to look after the num- 
bering and registering of the people in their tribes 
and centuries. The consuls in general commanded 



The Roman Government. 69 

the army, but sometimes, when there was a great 
need, one single leader was chosen and was called dic- 
tator. Sometimes a dictator was chosen merely to 
fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the head of the 
great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides 
these, all the priests had to be patricians ; the chief 
of all was called Pontifex Maximus. Some say 
this was because he was the fax (maker) of pontes 
(bridges), as he blessed them and decided by 
omens where they should be ; but others think the 
word was Pompifex, and that he was the maker of 
pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as 
well as augurs, who had to draw omens from the 
flight of birds or the appearance of sacrifices, and 
who kept the account of the calendar of lucky and 
unlucky days, and of festivals. 

The Koreans were a grave religious people in 
those days, and did not count their lives or their 
affections dear in comparison with their duties to 
their altars and their hearths, though their notions 
of duty do not always agree with ours. Their 
dress in the city was a white woollen garment 
edged with purple — it must have been more like 
in shape to a Scottish plaid than anything else — 
and was wrapped round so as to leave one arm free ; 
sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No 



70 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



one might wear it but a free-born Roman, and ho 
never went out on public business without it, even 
when more convenient fashions had been copied 
from Greece. Those who were asking votes for a 
public office wore it white (candidus), and there- 
fore were called candidates. The consuls had it 





FEMALE COSTUMES. 



on great days entirely purple and embroidered, and 
all senators and ex-magistrates had broader borders 
of purple. The ladies wore a long graceful wrap- 
ping-gown ; the boys a short tunic, and round their 



The Roman Government. 



71 



necks was hung a hollow golden ball called a bulla, 
or bubble. When a boy was seventeen, there was 
a great family sacrifice to the Lares and the fore- 
fathers, his bulla was taken off, the toga was put 
on, and he was enrolled by his own pnenomen, 
Caius or Lucius, or whatever it might be, for there 





FEMALE COSTUMES. 



was only a choice of fifteen. After this he was 
liable to be called out to fight. A certain number 
of men were chosen from each tribe by the tribune. 
It was divided into centuries, each led by a cen- 
turion : and the whole body together was called a 



72 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

legion, from lego, to choose. In later times the 
proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Each 
legion had a standard, a bar across the top of the 
spear, with the letters on it S P Q R — Senatus, 
Populus Que Romanus — meaning the Roman 
Senate and People, a purple flag below and a figure 
above, such as an eagle, or the wolf and twins, or 
some emblem dear to the Romans. The legions 
were on foot, but the troops of patricians and 
knights on horseback were attached to them and 
had to protect them. 

The Romans had in those days very small riches, 
they held in genera] small farms in the country, 
which they worked themselves with the help of 
their sons and slaves. The plebeians were often 
the richest. They too held farms leased to them 
by the state, and had often small shops in Rome. 
The whole territory was so small that it was easy 
to come into Rome to worship, attend the Senate, 
or vote, and many had no houses in the city. Each 
man was married with a ring and sacrifice, and the 
lady was then carried over the threshold, on which 
a sheepskin was spread, and made mistress of the 
house by being bidden to be Caia to Caius. The 
Roman matrons were good and noble women in 
those days, and the highest praise of them was held 



The Roman Government. 



73 



to be i hmum mansit, lanam fecit — she stayed at 
home <tnd spun wool. Each man was absolute 
mastei.' in his own house, and had full power over 
his grDwn-up sons, even for life or death, and they 
almos t always submitted entirely. For what made 
the E omans so great was that they were not only 
brave , but they were perfectly obedient, and 
obey d as perfectly as they could their fathers, 
their )fricers, their magistrates, and, as they thought, 
thajT geds. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

MENEKIUS AGRIPPA's FABLE. 
B.C. 494. 

A GREAT deal of the history of Rome consists 
of struggles between the patricians and 
plebeians. In those early days the plebeians were 
often poor, and when they wanted to improve their 
lands they had to borrow money from the patricians, 
who not only had larger lands, but, as they were 
the officers in war, got a larger share of the spoil. 
The Roman law was hard on a man in debt. His 
lands might be seized, he might be thrown into 
prison or sold into slavery with his wife and chil- 
dren, or, if the creditors liked, be cut to pieces so 
that each might take his share. 

One of these debtors, a man who was famous for 
bravery as a centurion, broke out of his prison and 
74 



Menenius AgrippcC s Fable. 75 

ran into the Forum, all in rags and with chains still 
hanging to his hands and feet, showing them to his 
fellow-citizens, and asking if this was just usage of 
a man who had done no crime. They were very 
angry, and the more because one of the consuls, 
Appius Claudius, was known to be very harsh, proud 
and cruel, as indeed were all his family. The Vols- 
cians, a tribe often at war with them, broke into 
their land at the same time, and the Romans were 
called to arms, but the plebians refused to march 
until their wrongs were redressed. On this the 
other consul, Servilius, promised that a law should 
be made against keeping citizens in prison for debt 
or making slaves of their children ; and thereupon 
the army assembled, marched against the enemy, 
and defeated them, giving up all the spoil to his 
troops. But the senate, when the danger was over, 
would not keep its promises, and even appointed a 
Dictator to put the plebians down. Thereupon 
they assembled outside the walls in a strong force, 
and were going to attack the patricians, when the 
wise old Menenius Agrippa was sent out to try to 
pacify them. He told them a fable, namely, that 
once upon a time all the limbs of a man's body be- 
came disgusted with the service they had to render 
to the belly. The feet and legs carried it about. 



76 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the hands worked for it and carried food to it 
the mouth ate for it, and so on. They thought 
it hard thus all to toil for it, and agreed to do 
nothing for it — neither to carry it about, clothe it, 
nor feed it. But soon all found themselves grow- 
ing weak and starved, and were obliged to own 
that all would perish together unless they went on 
waiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa 
told them that all ranks and states depended on 
one another, and unless all worked together all 
must be confusion and go to decay. The fable 
seems to have convinced both rich and poor ; the 
debtors were set free and the debts forgiven. And 
though the laws about debts do not seem to have 
been changed, another law was made which gave 
the plebeians tribunes in peace as well as war. 
These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen 
by their own fellows. No one was allowed to hurt 
them during their year of office, on pain of being 
declared accursed and losing his property ; and 
they had the power of stopping any decision of the 
senate by saying solemnly, Veto, I forbid. They 
were called tribunes of the people, while the offi- 
cers in war were called military tribunes ; and as it 
was on the Mons Sacer, or Sacred Mount, that this 
was settled, these laws were called the Leges Sacra- 



Menenius Agrippas* s Fable. 77 

rice. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was 
built to consecrate them ; and, in gratitude for his 
management, Menenius Agrippa was highly honored 
all his life, and at his death had a public funeral. 

But the struggles of the plebeians against the 
patricians were not by any means over. The Roman 
land — Agri (acre), it was called — had at first 
been divided in equal shares — at least so it was 
said — but as belonging to the state all the time, 
and only held by the occupier. As time went on, 
some persons of course gathered more into their 
own hands, and others of spendthrift or unfortunate 
families became destitute. Then there was an out- 
cry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, 
it ought to take them all back and divide them 
again more equally: but the patricians naturally 
regarded themselves as the owners, and would 
not hear of this scheme, which we shall hear of 
again and again by the name of the Agrarian 
Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice 
been consul, by name Spurius Cassius, did all 
he could to bring it about, but though the law 
was passed he could not succeed in getting it car- 
ried out. The patricians hated him, and a report 
got abroad that he was only gaining favor with the 
people in order to get himself made king. This 



78 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

made even the plebeians turn against him as a 
traitor : he was condemned by the whole assembly 
of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged 
by the lictors. The people soon mourned for their 
friend, and felt that they had been deceived in 
giving him up to their enemies. The senate would 
not execute his law, and the plebeians would not 
enlist in the next war, though the senate threat- 
ened to cut down the fruit trees and destroy the 
crops of every man who refused to join the army. 
When they were absolutely driven into the ranks, 
they even refused to draw their swords in face of 
the enemy, and would not gain a victory lest their 
consul should have the honor of it. 

This consul's name was Kseso Fabius. He be- 
longed to a very clever, wary family, whose name 
it was said was originally Foveus (ditch), because 
they had first devised a plan of snaring wolves in 
pits or ditches. They were thought such excellent 
defenders of the claims of the patricians that for 
seven years following one or other of the Fabii was 
chosen consul. But by-and-by they began either to 
see that the plebeians had rights, or that they should 
do best by siding with them, for they went over to 
them ; and when Kaeso next was consul he did all 
he could to get the laws of Cassius carried out, but 



Menenius Agrippas Fable. 81 

the senate were furious with him, and he found it 
was not safe to stay in Rome when his consulate 
was over. So he resolved at any rate to do good 
to his country. The Etruscans often came over 
the border and ravaged the country; but there 
was a watch-tower on the banks of the little river 
Cremera, which flows into the Tiber, and Fabius 




r ©F A ROMAN HARBOR. 



offered, with all the men of his name — 306 in 
number, and 4000 clients — to keep guard there 
against the enemy. For some time they prospered 
there, and gained much spoil from the Etruscans ; 
but at last the whole Etruscan army came against 



82 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

them, showing only a small number at first to 
tempt them out to fight, then falling on them with 
the whole force and killing the whole of them, so 
that of the whole name there remained only one 
boy of fourteen who had been left behind at Rome. 
And what was worse, the consul, Titus Menenius, 
was so near the army that he could have saved the 
Fabii, but for the hatred the patricians bore them 
as deserters from their cause. 

However, the tribune Publilius gained for the 
plebeians that there should be five tribunes instead 
of two, and made a change in the manner of elect- 
ing them which prevented the patricians from in- 
terfering. Also it was decreed that to interrupt a 
tribune in a public speech deserved death. But 
whenever an Appius Claudius was consul he took 
his revenge, and w r as cruelly severe, especially in 
the camp, where the consul as general had much 
more power than in Rome. Again the angry ple- 
beians would not fight, but threw down their arms 
in sight of the enemy. Claudius scourged and be- 
headed; they endured grimly and silently, know- 
ing that when he returned to Rome and his con- 
sulate was over their tribunes would call him to 
account. And so they did, and before all the 
tribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his 



Menenius Agrippa's Fable. 83 

savage treatment of free Roman citizens. He made 
a violent answer, but he saw how it would go with 
him, and put himself to death to avoid the sen- 
tence. So were the Romans proving again and 
again the truth of Agrippa's parable, that nothing 
can go well with body or members unless each will 
be ready to serve the other. 




CHAPTER IX. 

CORIOLANTJS AND CrN"CHOTATT7S. 
B. c. 458. 

A LL the time these struggles were going on 
•^ -** between the patricians and the plebeians at 
home, there were wars with the neighboring tribes, 
the Volscians, the Veians, the Latins, and the 
Etruscans. Every spring the fighting men went 
out, attacked their neighbors, drove off their cattle, 
and tried to take some town ; then fought a battle, 
and went home to reap the harvest, gather the 
grapes and olives in the autumn, and attend to 
public business and vote for the magistrates in the 
winter. They were small wars, but famous men 
fought in them. In a war against the Volscians, 
when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city 
called Corioli, when news came that the men of 
Antium were marching against him, and in their 
84 



Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. 85 

first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten 
off, but a gallant young patrician, descended from 
the king Ancus Marcius, Caius Marcius by name, 
rallied them and led them back with such spirit 
that the place was taken before the hostile army 
came up ; then he fought among the foremost and 
gained the victory. When he was brought to the 
consul's tent covered with wounds, Cominius did 
all he could to show his gratitude — set on the 
young man's head the crown of victory, gave him 
the surname of Coriolanus in honor of his exploits, 
and granted him the tenth part of the spoil of ten 
prisoners. Of them, however, Coriolanus only ac- 
cepted one, an old friend of the family, whom he 
set at liberty at once. Afterwards, when there was 
a great famine in Rome, Coriolanus led an expedi- 
tion to Antium, and brought away quantities of 
corn and cattle, which he distributed freely, keep- 
ing none for himself. 

But though he was so free of hand, Coriolanus 
was a proud, shy man, who w T ould not make friends 
with the plebeians, and whom the tribunes hated 
as much as he despised them. He was elected con- 
sul, and the tribunes refused to permit him to be- 
come one ; and when a shipload of wheat arrived 
from Sicily, there was a fierce quarrel as to how it 



86 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

should be distributed. The tribunes impeached 
him before the people for withholding it from them^ 
and by the vote of a large number of citizens he 
was banished from Roman lands. His anger was 
great, but quiet. He went without a word away 
from the Forum to his house, where he took leave 
of his mother Veturia, his wife Volumnia, and his 
little children, and then went and placed himself 
by the hearth of Tullus the Volscian chief, in 
whose army he meant to fight to revenge himself 
upon his countrymen. 

Together they advanced upon the Roman terri- 
tory, and after ravaging the county threatened to 
besiege Rome. Men of rank came out and entreat- 
ed him to give up this wicked and cruel vengeance, 
and to have pity on his friends and native city ; 
but he answered that the Volscians were now his 
nation, and nothing" would move him. At last, 
however, all the women of Rome came forth, 
headed by his mother Veturia and his wife Volum- 
nia, each with a little child, and Veturia entreated 
and commanded her son in the most touching man- 
ner to change his purpose and cease to ruin his 
country, begging him, if he meant to destroy Rome, 
to begin by slaying her. She threw herself at his 
feet as she spoke, and his hard spirit gave w/ f. 



Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. 87 

"Ah ! mother, what is it you do ? " he cried as he 
lifted her up. " Thou hast saved Rome, but lost 
thy son." 

And so it proved, for when he had broken up 
his camp and returned to the Volscian territory till 
the senate should recall him as they proceded, 




ROMAN CAMR 



Tullus, angry and disappointed, stirred up a tumult, 
and he was killed by the people before he could be 
sent for to Rome. A temple to " Women's Good 
Speed " was raised on the spot where Veturia 
knelt to him. 

Another very proud patrician family was the 



88 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Quinctian. The father, Lucius Quinctius, was 
called Cincinuatus, from his long flowing curls 
of hair. He was the ablest man among the Romans, 
but stern and grave, and his eldest son Kseso was 
charged by the tribunes with a murder and fled the 
country. Soon after there was a great inroad of 
the JEqui and Volscians, and the Romans found 
themselves in great danger. They saw no one 
could save them but Cincinnatus, so they met in 
haste and chose him Dictator, though he was not 
present. Messengers were sent to his little farm 
on the Tiber, and there they found him holding the 
stilts of the plough. When they told their errand, 
he turned to his wife, who was helping him, and 
said, " Racilia, fetch me my toga ; " then he washed 
his face and hands, and was saluted as Dictator. 
A boat was ready to take him to Rome, and as he 
landed, he was met by the four-and-twenty lictors 
belonging to the two consuls and escorted to his 
dwelling. In the morning he named as general of 
the cavalry Lucius Tarquitius, a brave old patrician 
who had become too poor even to keep a horse. 
Marching out at the head of all the men who could 
bear arms, he thoroughly routed the iEqui, and 
then resigned his dictatorship at the end of sixteen 
&*ys. Nor would he accept any of the spoil, but 



Coriolanus and Oincinnatus. 89 

Went back to his plough, his only reward being 
that his son was forgiven and recalled from ban- 
ishment. 

These are the grand old stories that came down 
from old time, but how much is true no one can 
tell, and there is reason to think that, though the 
leaders like Cincinnatus and Coriolanus might be 
brave, the Romans were really pressed hard by the 




PLOUGHING. 

Volscians and iEqui, and lost a good deal of ground, 
though they were too proud to own it. No won- 
der, while the two orders of the state were always 
pulling different ways. However, the tribune 
Icilius succeeded in the year 454 in getting the 
Aventine Hill granted to the plebeians ; and they 



90 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

had another champion called Lucius Sicinius Den- 
tatus, who was so brave that he was called the 
Roman Achilles. He had received no less than 
forty-five wounds in different fights before he was 
fifty-eight years old, and had had fourteen civic 
crowns. For the Romans gave an oak-leaf wreath, 
which they called a civic crown, to a man who 
saved the life of a fellow-citizen, and a mural 
crown to him who first scaled the walls of a be- 
sieged city. And when a consul had gained a great 
victory, he had what was called a triumph. He 
was drawn in his chariot into the city, his victorious 
troops marching before him with their spears wav- 
ing with laurel boughs, a wreath of laurel was on 
his head, his little children sat with him in the 
chariot, and the spoil of the enemy was carried 
along. All the people decked their houses and 
came forth rejoicing in holiday array, while he pro- 
ceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter 
there. His chief prisoners walked behind his car 
in chains, and at the moment of his sacrifice they 
were taken to a cell below the Capitol and there 
put to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. 
Nothing was more desired than such a triumph ; 
but such was often the hatred between the plebeians 
and the patricians, that sometimes the pMeian 



Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. 



91 



nrinj would stop short in the middle of a victorious 
campaign to hinder their consul from having a 
triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted 
thus, and it began to be plain that Rome must fall 
if it continued to be thus divided against itself. 




CHAPTER X. 

THE DECEMVIRS. 
B.C. 450. 

THE Romans began to see what mischiefs their 
quarrels did, and they agreed to send three 
of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the 
laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any 
of them could be put in force at Rome. 

To get the new code of laws which they brought 
home put into working order, it was agreed for the 
time to have no consuls, praetors, nor tribunes, but 
ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine 
Athenian archons. They were called Decemvirs 
(decern, ten ; vir, a man), and at their head was 
Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who 
had killed himself to avoid being condemned for 
his harshness. At first they governed well, and a 

92 



The Decemvirs. 93 

very good set of laws was drawn up, which the 
Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but 
Appius soon began to give way to the pride of his 
nature, and made himself hated. There was a war 
with the iEqui, in which the Romans were beaten. 
Old Sicinius Dentatus said it was owing to bad 
management, and, as he had been in one hundred 
and twenty battles, everybody believed him. There- 
upon Appius Claudius sent for him, begged for his 
advice, and asked him to join the army that he 
might assist the commanders. They received him 
warmly, and, when he advised them to move their 
camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and sent 
a guard with him of one hundred men. But these 
were really wretches instructed to kill him, and as 
soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass they set 
upon him. The brave old warrior set his back 
against a rock and fought so fiercely that he killed 
many, and the rest durst not come near him, but 
climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones 
rolled down on his head. Then they went back 
with a story that they had been attacked by the 
enemy, which was believed, till a party went out 
to bury the dead, and found there were only Roman 
corpses all lying round the crushed body of Sicinius, 
and that none were stripped of their armor or 



94 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

clothes. Then the true history was found out, but 
the Decemvirs sheltered the commanders, and would 
believe nothing against them. 

Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all 
honest men even more than this treachery to the 
brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the 
place of public assembly for state affairs, but the 
regular market-place, where there were stalls and 
booths for all the wares that Romans dealt in — 
meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold 
in earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even 
booths where reading and writing was taught to 
boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters 
in the sand, and then hy writing them with an iron 
pen on a waxen table in a frame, or with a reed 
upon parchment. The children of each family came 
escorted by a slave — the girls by their nurse, the 
boys by one called a pedagogue. 

Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across 
the Forum, saw at one of these schools a girl of fif- 
teen reading her lesson. She was so lovely that he 
asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her 
name was Virginia, and that she was the daughter 
of an honorable plebeian and brave centurion named 
Virginius, who was absent with the army fighting 
with the JEqui, and that she was to marry a young 




Death of Virginia. 



The Decemvirs. 97 

man named Icilius as soon as the campaign was 
over. Appius would gladly have married her him- 
self, but there was a patrician law against wedding 
plebeians, and he wickedly determined that if he 
could not have her for his wife he would have her 
for his slave. 

There was one of his clients named Marcus 
Claudius, whom he paid to get up a story that Vh> 
ginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never 
had any child at all, but had bought a baby of one 
of his slaves and had deceived her husband with it, 
and thus that poor Virginia was really his slave. 
As the maiden was reading at her school, this 
wretch and a band of fellows like him seized upon 
her, declaring that she was his property, and that 
he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, 
and she was dragged as far as Appius' judgment- 
seat ; but by that time her faithful nurse had called 
the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who could answer 
for it that she was really his sister's child. But 
Appius would not listen to him, and all that he 
could gain was that judgment should not be given 
in the matter until Virginius should have been 
fetched from the camp. 

Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius 
before the messengers of Appius had reached the 



98 



Young Folks* History of Rome. 



general with orders to stop him, and he came to 
the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weep- 
ing, and attended by a great many ladies. Claudius 
brought his slave, who made false oath that she 
had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the 




CHARIOT RACES. 



other hand, all the kindred of Virginius and his 
wife gave such proof of the contrary as any honest 
judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius 
chose to declare that the truth was with his client. 
There was a great murmur of all the people, but he 
frowned at them, and told them he knew of their 
meetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol 



The Decemvirs. 99 

ready to punish them, so they must stand back and 
not hinder a master from recovering his slave. 

Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as 
if to give her a last embrace, and drew her close to 
the stall of a butcher where lay a great knife . He 
wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, " My own 
dear little girl, there is no way but this," he snatched 
up the knife and plunged it into her heart, then 
drawing it out he cried, " By this blood, Appius, I 
devote thy blood to the infernal gods." 

He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could 
not seize him, and he mounted his horse and galloped 
back to the army, four hundred men following him, 
and he arrived still holding the knife. Every sol- 
dier who heard the story resolved no longer to bear 
with the Decemvirs, but to march back to the city 
at once and insist on the old government being 
restored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop 
them, but they only answered, " We are men with 
swords in our hands." At the same time there 
was such a tumult in the city, that Appius was 
forced to hide himself in his own house while Vir- 
ginia's corpse was carried on a bier through the 
streets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and 
wreaths of their own hair upon it. When the 
troops arrived, they and the people joined in de- 



100 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

manding that the Decemvirs should be given up to 
them to be burnt alive, and that the old magistrates 
should be restored. However, two patricians, Lu- 
cius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to 
arrange matters that the nine comparatively inno- 
cent Decemvirs were allowed to depose themselves, 
and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killed 
himself rather than face the trial that awaited him. 
The new code of laws, however, remained, but con- 
suls, prsetors, tribunes, and all the rest of the 
magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a 
law was passed which enabled patricians and ple- 
beians to intermarry. 




CHAPTER XI. 

CAMELLUS' BANISHMENT. 
B.C. 390. 

THE wars with the Etruscans went on, and 
chiefly with the city of Veii, which stood on 
a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether 
thirty years at war with it. At last the Romans 
made ap their minds that, instead of going home 
every harvest-time to gather in their crops, they 
must watcli the city constantly till they could take 
it, and thus, as the besiegers were unable to do their 
own work, pay was raised for them to enable them 
to get it done, and this was the beginning of paying 
armies. 

The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during 
the last the Alban lake filled to an unusual height, 
although the summer was very dry. One of the 
101 



102 Young Folks" History of Rome. 

Veian soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, 
" You will never take Veii till the Alban lake is 
dry." It turned out that there was an old tradition 
that Veii should fall when the lake was drained. 
On this the senate sent orders to have canals dug to 
carry the waters to the sea, and these still remain. 
Still Veii held out, and to finish the w^ar a dictator 
was appointed, Marcus Furius Camillus, who chose 




ARROW MACHINE. 

for his second in command a man of one of the 
most virtuous families in Rome, as their surname 
testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio, or the 
Staff, because either he or one of his forefathers had 
been the staff of his father's old age. Camillus 



Camillus* Banishment. 103 

took the city by assault, with an immense quantity 
of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers. 

Camillus in his pride took to himself at his tri- 
umph honors that had hitherto only been paid to 
the gods. He had his face painted with vermilion 
and his car drawn by milk-white horses. This 
shocked the people, and he gave greater offence by 
declaring that he had vowed a tenth part of the 
spoil to Apollo, but had forgotten it in the division 
of the plunder, and now must take it again. The 
soldiers would not consent, but lest the god should 
be angry with them, it was resolved to send a gold 
vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of 
Rome brought their jewels, and the senate reward- 
ed them by a decree that funeral speeches might 
be made over their graves as over those of men, 
and likewise that they might be driven in chariots 
to the public games. 

Camillus commanded in another war with the 
Falisci, also an Etruscan race, and laid siege to 
their city. The sons of almost all the chief families 
were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who 
taught them both reading and all kinds of exercises. 
One day this man, pretending to take the boys out 
walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the 
tent of Camillus, where he told that he brought them 



104 Young Folks' History of Home. 

all, and with them the place, since the Romans had 
only to threaten their lives to make their fathers 
deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so 
shocked at such perfidy, that he immediately bade 
the lictors strip the fellow instantly, and give the 
boys rods with which to scourge him back into the 
town. Their fathers w^ere so grateful that they 
made peace at once, and about the same time the 
JEqui were also conquered ; and the commons and 
open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that 
each Roman freeman had six acres, the plebeians 
were contented for the time. 

The truth seems to have been that these Etrus- 
can nations were weakened by a great new nation 
coming on them from the North. They were what 
the Romans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great 
races of the old stock which has always been find- 
ing its way westward into Europe, and they had 
their home north of the Alps, but they were al- 
ways pressing on and on, and had long since made 
settlements in northern Italy. They were in clans, 
each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining 
together in one brotherhood. They had lands to 
which whole families had a common right, and 
when their numbers outgrew what the land could 
maintain, the bolder ones would set off with their 



Camillus > Banishment. 107 

wives, children, and cattle to find new homes. 
The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun 
first in the same way, and their tribes, and the 
claims of all to the common land, were the remains 
of the old way ; but they had been settled in cities 
so long that this had been forgotten, and they were 
very different people from the wild men who spoke 
what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan 
trews and plaids, with gold collars round their 
necks, round shields, huge broadswords, and their 
red or black hair long and shaggy. The Romans 
knew little or nothing about what passed beyond 
their own Apennines, and went on with their own 
quarrels. Camillus was accused of having taken 
more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, in 
especial a brass door from a temple. His friends 
offered to pay any fine that might be laid on him, 
but he was too proud to stand his trial, and chose 
rather to leave Rome. As he passed the gates, he 
turned .round and called upon the gods to bring 
Rome to speedy repentance for having driven him 
away. 

Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war 
with Clusium, the city of Porsena, and the inhabi- 
tants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and the 
senate sent three young brothers of the- Fabian 



108 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

family to try to arrange matters. They met the 
Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors call 
Brennus, and asked him what was his quarrel with 
Clusium or his right to any part of Etruria. Bren- 
nus answered that his right was his sword, and that 
all things belonged to the brave, and that his quar- 
rel with the men of Clusium was, that though they 
had more land than they could till, they would not 
yield him any. As to the Romans, they had robbed 
their neighbors already, and had no right to find 
■ fault. 

This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they 
forgot the caution of their family, as well as those 
rules of all nations which forbid an ambassador to 
fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by 
the enemy ; and when the men of Clusium made 
an attack on the Gauls they joined in the attack, 
and Quintus, the eldest brother, slew one of the 
chiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws 
of nations, and in great anger broke up his siege 
of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome, de- 
manded that the Fabii should be given up to him. 
Instead of this, the Romans made them all three 
military tribunes, and as the Gauls came nearer the 
whole army marched out to meet them in such 
haste that they did not wait to sacrifice to the gods 



Camillus' Banishment. 109 

nor consult the omens. The tribunes were all 
young and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls ; 
so out they went to attack them on the banks of 
the Allia, only seven and a-half miles from Rome. 
A most terrible defeat they had ; many fell in the 
field, many were killed in the flight, others were 
drowned in trying to swim the Tiber, others scat- 
tered to Veii and the other cities, and a few, horror- 
stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with 
the sad tidings. There were not men enough left 
to defend the walls ! The enemy would instantly 
be upon them ! The only place strong enough to 
keep them out was the Capitol, and that would 
only hold a few people within it ! So there was 
nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger 
men shut themselves up in the Capitol ; all the 
rest, with the women and children, put their most 
precious goods into carts and left the city. The 
Vestal Virgins carried the sacred fire, and w^ere 
plodding along in the heat, when a plebeian named 
Albmus saw their state, helped them into his cart, 
and took them to the city of Cumse, where they 
found shelter in a temple. And so Rome was left 
to the enemy. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SACK OF ROME. 
B. C 390. 

ROME was left to the enemy, except for the 
small garrison in the Capitol and for eighty 
of the senators, men too old to flee, who devoted 
themselves to the gods to save the rest, and, array- 
ing themselves in their robes — some as former 
consuls, some as priests, some as generals — sat 
down with their ivory staves in their hands, in 
their chairs of state in the Forum, to await the 
enemy. 

In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the 
city till they came to the Forum, where they stood 
amazed and awe-struck at the sight of the eighty 
grand old men motionless in their chairs. At first 
they looked at the strange, calm figures as if they 

were the gods of the place, until one Gaul, as if desir- 
110 



The Sack of Home. 



Ill 



ous of knowing whether they were flesh and blood or 
not, stroked the beard of the nearest. The senator, 
esteeming this an insult, struck the man on the 




RUINS OF THE FOKUM AT ROME. 



112 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

face with his staff, and this was the sign for the 
slaughter of them all. 

Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, 
dragging out and killing the few inhabitants they 
found there ; feasting, revelling, and piling up 
riches to carry away ; burning and overthrowing 
the houses. Day after day the little garrison in 
the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if their 
stock of food would hold out till the Gauls should 
go away or till their friends should come to their 
relief. Yet when the day came round for the sacri- 
fice to the ancestor of one of these beleaguered men, 
he boldly went forth to the altar of his own ruined 
house on the Quirinal Hill, and made his offering 
to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul venture to 
touch him, seeing that he was performing a relig- 
ious rite. 

The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where 
they found Camillus, and were by him formed into 
an army, but he would not take the generalship 
without authority from what was left of the Senate, 
and that was shut up in the Capitol in the midst of 
the Gauls. A brave man, however, named Pontius 
Cominius, declared that he could make his way 
through the Gauls by night, and climb up the 
Capitol and down again by a precipice which they 



The Sack of Rome. 113 

did not watch because they thought no one could 
mount it, and that he would bring back the orders 
of the Senate. He swam the Tiber by the help of 
corks, landed at night in ruined Rome among the 
sleeping enemy, and climbed up the rock, bringing 
hope at last to the worn-out and nearly starving 
garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence 
of banishment against Camillus, and named him 
Dictator. Pontius, having rested in the meantime, 
slid down the rock and made his way back to Ardea 
safely ; but the broken twigs and torn ivy on the 
rock showed the Gauls that it had been scaled, and 
they resolved that where man had gone man could 
go. So Brennus told off the most surefooted 
mountaineers he could find, and at night, two and 
two, they crept up the crag, so silently that no 
alarm was given, till just as they came to the top, 
some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and 
for that reason had been spared in spite of the 
scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and thus 
brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus 
Manlius, who found two Gauls in the act of setting 
foot on the level ground on the top. With a sweep 
of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and 
with his buckler smote the other on the head, 
tumbling them both headlong down, knocking down 



114 Young Folks' History of Rome 

their fellows in their flight, and the Capitol was 
saved. 

By way of reward every Roman soldier brought 
Manlius a few grains of the corn he received from 
the common stock and a few drops of wine, while 
the tribune who was on guard that night was 
thrown from the rock. 

Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men 
dying from the fever that always prevailed in 
Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, 
and offered to leave Rome if the garrison in the 
Capitol would pay him a thousand pounds' weight 
of gold. There was treasure enough in the temples 
to do this, and as they could not tell what Camillus 
was about, nor if Pontius had reached him safely, 
and they were on the point of being starved, they 
consented. The gold was brought to the place ap- 
pointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved 
not to be equal to the amount that the Romans had 
with them, Brennus resolved to have all, put his 
sword into the other scale, saying, " Vse victis " 
— " Woe to the conquered." But at that moment 
there was a noise outside — Camillus was come. 
The Gauls were cut down and slain among the 
ruins, those who fled were killed by the people in 
the country as they wandered in the fields, and not 



The Sack of Rome. 115 

one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the 
Capitol was rescued, and was laid up by Camillus 
in the vaults as a reserve for future danger. 

This was the Roman story, but their best histo- 
rians say that it is made better for Rome than is 
quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really con- 
quered, and the Gauls helped themselves to what- 
ever they chose and went off with it, though sick- 
ness and weariness made them afterwards disperse, 
so that they were mostly cut off by the country 
people. 

Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so 
that, before this, Roman history can only be hear- 
say, derived from what the survivors recollected; 
and the whole of the buidings, temples, senate- 
house, and dwellings \&y in ruins. Some of the 
citizens wished to change the site of the city to 
Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was re- 
solved to hold fast by the hearths of their fathers, 
and while the debate was going on in the ruins of 
the senate-house a troop of soldiers were marching 
in, and the centurion was heard calling out, " Plant 
your ensign here ; this is a good place to stay in." 
" A happy omen," cried one of the senators ; " I 
adore the gods who gave it." So it was settled to 
rebuild the city, and in digging among the ruins 



116 Young Folks History of Rome, 

there were found the golden rod of Romulus, the 
brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve 
Tables were engraved, and other brasses with rec- 
ords of treaties with other nations. Fabius was 
accused of having done all the harm by having 
broken the law of nations, but he was spared at the 
entreaty of his friends. Manlius was surnamed 
Gapitolinus, and had a house granted him on the 
Capitol ; and Camillus when he laid down his dic- 
tatorship, was saluted as like Romulus — another 
founder of Rome. 

The new buildings were larger and more orna- 
mented than the old ones ; but the Knes of the old 
underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan 
fashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were 
not followed, and this tended to render Rome more 
unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens lived 
there in summer or autumn, but went out to coun- 
try houses on the hills. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE. 
B.C. 367. 

A LL the old enemies of Rome attacked her 
-*■ ^- again when she was weak and rising out of 
her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the 
Romans to add the people of Veii, Capena, and . 
Falerii to the number of their citizens, making four 
more tribes : and this addition to their numbers 
helped them beat off their foes. 

But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, 
and enabled them to make their claims more heard. 
Moreover, the old quarrel between poor and rich, 
debtor and creditor, broke out again. Those who 
had saved their treasure in the time of the sack had 
made loans to those who had lost to enable them to 
build their houses and stock their farms again, 
119 



120 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



and after a time they called loudly for payment, 
and when it was not forthcoming had the debtors 
seized to be sold as slaves. Camillus himself was 
one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks 
where slaves were placed to be sold were full of 
citizens. 

Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and 




COSTUMES. 



raised money to redeem four hundred of them, try- 
ing with all his might to get the law changed and 
to save the rest; but the rich men and the patri- 
cians thought he acted only out of jealousy of Ca- 
millus, and to get up a party for himself. They 



The Plebeian Consulate. 



121 



said he was raising a sedition, and Publius Corne- 

'ius Cossus was named Dictator to put it down. 

Manlius was seized and put into chains, but released 

again. At last the rich men bought oyer two of 

the tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make 

himself a king, and this hated 

vitle turned all the people 

against their friend, so that the 

general cry sentenced him to be 

*3ast down from the top of the 

Tarpeian rock ; his house on the 

Oapitol was overthrown, and his 

family declared that no son of 

their house should ever again 

bear the name of Manlius. 

Yet the plebeians were making 
their way, and at last succeeded 
in gaining the plebeian magis- 
tracies and equal honors with 

. COSTUME. 

the patricians. A curious story 
is told of the cause of the last effort which gained 
the day. A patrician named Fabius Ambustus had 
two daughters, one of whom he gave in marriage to 
Servius Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune, 
the other to Licinius Stolo. One day, when Stolo's 
wife was visiting her sister, there was a great noise 




122 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

and thundering at the gates which frightened her, 
until the other Fabii said it was only her husband 
coming home from the Forum attended by his 
lictors and clients, laughing at her ignorance and 
alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came in to 
pay their court to the tribune's wife. 

Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and 
reproached her husband and her father for not hav- 
ing made her equal with her sister, and so wrought 
on them that they put themselves at the head of 
the movement in favor of the plebeians ; and Licin- 
ius and aftother young plebeian named Lucius Sex- 
tius, being elected year after year tribunes of the 
people, went on every time saying Veto to what- 
ever was proposed by anybody, and giving out that 
they should go on doing so till three measures were 
carried — viz., that interest on debt should not be 
demanded ; that no citizen should possess more than 
three hundred and twenty acres cf the public land, 
or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on 
the public pastures; and, lastly, that one of the 
two consuls should always be a plebeian. 

They went on for eight years, always elected by 
the people and always stopping everything. At 
last there was another inroad of the Gauls expected, 
and Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the 



The Plebeian Consulate. 123 

fifth time chosen Dictator, and gained a great vic- 
tory "upon the banks of the Anio. The Senate 
begged him to continue Dictator till he could set 
their affairs to rights, and he yowed to build a tem- 
ple to Concord if he could succeed. He saw indeed 
that it was time to yield, and persuaded the Senate 
to think so ; so that at last, in the year 367, Sextius 
was elected consul, together with a patrician, JEmil- 
ius. Even then the Senate would not receive 

Sextius till he was introduced bv Camillus. From 

t/ 

this time the patricians and plebeians were on an 
equal footing as far as regarded the magistracies, 
but the priesthood could belong only to the patri- 
cians. Camillus lived to a great age, and was 
honored as having three times saved his country. 
He died at last of a terrible pestilence which raged 
in Eome in the year 365. 

The priests recommended that they should invite 
the players from Etruria to perform a drama in 
honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the be« 
ginning of play-acting in Rome. 

Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in 
the Forum, most likely from an earthquake, but 
nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests and 
augurs consulted their oracles about it. These 
made answer that it would only close on receiving 



124 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

of what was most precious. Gold and jewels were 
thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at 
last the augurs declared that it was courage that 
was the most precious thing in Rome. Thereupon 
a patrician youth named Marcus Curtius decked 
himself in his choicest robes, put on his armor, took 
his shield, sword, and spear, mounted his horse, and 
leapt headlong into the gulf, thus giving it the 
most precious of all things, courage and self-devo- 
tion. After this one story says it closed of itself, 
another that it became easy to fill it up with earth. 
The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must 
please the gods and bring them success in their 
battles ; but in the war with the Hernici that was 
now being waged the plebeian consul was killed, 
and no doubt there was much difficulty in getting 
the patricians to obey a plebeian properly, for in the 
course of the next twenty years it was necessary 
fourteen times to appoint a Dictator for the defence 
of the state, so that it is plain there must have been 
many alarms and much difficulty in enforcing dis- 
cipline ; but, on the whole, success was with Rome, 
and the neighboring tribes grew weaker,, 




CURTIUS leaping into tme gulf. {From a Bas-Relitf.} 



CHAPTER XIVo 

THE DEVOTION OE DECITTS. 
B.C. 357. 

/^\THER tribes of the Gauls did not fail to 
^-^ come again and make fresh inroads on the 
valleys of the Tiber and Anio Whenever they 
came, instead of choosing men from the tribes to 
form an army, as in a war with their neighbors, all 
the fighting men of the nation turned out to oppose 
them, generally under a Dictator. 

In one of these wars the Gauls came within three 
miles of Rome, and the two hosts were encamped 
on the banks of the Anio, with a bridge between 
them. Along this bridge strutted an enormous 
Gallic chief, much taller than any of the Romans, 
boasting himself, and calling on any one of them to 
come out and fight with him. Again it was a 
127 



128 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Manlius who distinguished himself. Titus, a young 
man of that family, begged the Dictator's permis- 
sion to accept the challenge, and, having gained it, 
he changed his round knight's shield for the square 
one of the foot soldiers, and with his short sword 
came forward on the bridge. The Gaul made a 
sweep at him with his broadsword, but, slipping 
within the guard, Manlius stabbed the giant in two 
places, and as he fell cut off his head, and took the 
tore, or broad twisted gold collar that was the 
mark of all -Gallic chieftains. Thence the brave 
youth was called Titus Manlius Torquatus — a sur- 
name to make up for that of Capitolinus, which 
had never been used again. 

The next time the Gauls came, Marcus Valerius, 
a descendant of the old hero Pu-blicola, was consul, 
and gained a great victory. It was said that in the 
midst of the fight a monstrous raven appeared fly- 
ing over his head, resting now and then on his 
helmet, but generally pecking at the eyes of the 
Gauls and flapping its wings in their faces, so that 
they fled discomfited. Thence he was called Cor- 
yus or Corvinus. The Gauls never again came in 
such force, but a new enemy came against them, 
namely, the Samnites, a people who dwelt to the 
south of them. They were of Italian blood, moun- 



X 




The Devotion of Decius. 131 

taineers of the Southern Apennines, not unlike the 
Romans in habits, language, and training, and the 
staunchest enemies they had yet encountered. The 
war began from an entreaty from the people of 
Campania to the Romans to defend them from the 
attacks of the Samnites. For the Campanians, 
living in the rich plains, whose name is still un- 
changed, were an idle, languid people, whom the 
stout men of Samnium could easily overcome. The 
Romans took their part, and Valerius Corvus 
gained a victory at Mount Gaurus ; but the other 
consul, Cornelius Cossus, fell into danger, having 
marched foolishly into a forest, shut in by moun- 
tains, and with only one way out through a deep 
valley, which was guarded by the Samnites. In 
this almost hopeless danger one of the military 
tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, discovered a little 
hill above the enemy's camp, and asked leave to 
lead a small body of men to seize it, since he would 
be likely thus to draw off the Samnites, and while 
they were destroying him, as he fully expected, the 
Romans could get out of the valley. Hidden by 
the wood, he gained the hill, and there the Sam- 
nites saw him, to their great amazement; and 
while they were considering whether to attack him, 
the other Romans were able to march out of the 



132 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

valley. Finding lie was not attacked, Decius set 
guards, and, when night came on, marched down 
again as quietly as possible to join the army, who 
were now on the other side of the Samnite camp. 
Through the midst of this he and his little camp 
went without alarm, until, about half-way across, 
one Roman struck his foot against a shield. The 
noise awoke the Samnites, but Decius caused his 
men to give a great shout, and this, in the dark- 
ness, so confused the enemy that they missed the 
little body of Romans, who safely gained their own 
camp. Decius cut short the thanks and joy of the 
consul by advising him to fall at once on the Sam- 
nite camp in its dismay, and this was done ; the 
Samnites were entirely routed, 30,000 killed, and 
their camp taken. Decius received for his reward 
a hundred oxen, a white bull with gilded horns, 
and three crowns — one of gold for courage, one of 
oak for having saved the lives of his fellow-citizens, 
and one of grass for having taken the enemy's 
camp — while all his men were for life to receive a 
double allowance of corn. Decius offered up the 
white bull in sacrifice to Mars, and gave the oxen 
to the companions of his glor}^. 

Afterwards Valerius routed the Samnites again, 
and his troops brought in 120 standards and 40,000 



The Devotion of Decius. 133 

shields which they had picked up, having been 
thrown away by the enemy in their flight. 

Peace was made for the time ; but the Latins, 
now in alliance with Rome, began to make war on 
the Samnites. They complained, and the Romans 
feeling bound to take their part, a great Latin war 
began. Manlius Torquatus and Decius Mus, the 
two greatest heroes of Rome, were consuls. As the 
Latins and Romans were alike in dress, arms, and 
language, in order to prevent taking friend for foe, 
strict orders were given that no one should attack 
a Latin without orders, or go out of his rank, on 
pain of death. A Latin champion came out boast- 
ing, as the two armies lay beneath Mount Vesuvius, 
then a fair vine-clad hill showing no flame. Young 
Manlius remembering his father's fame, darted out, 
fought hand to hand with the Latin, slew him, and 
brought home his spoils to his father's feet. He 
had forgotten that his father had onty fought after 
permission was given. The elder Manlius received 
him with stern grief. He had broken the law of 
discipline, and he must die. His head was struck off 
amid the grief and anger of the army. The battle 
was bravely fonght, but it went against the Romans 
at first. Then Decius, recollecting a vision which 
had declared that a consul must devote himself for 



134 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

his country, called on Valerius, the Pontifex Max- 
imus, to dedicate him. He took off his armor, put 
on his purple toga, covered his head with a veil, and 
standing on a spear, repeated the words of consecra- 
tion after Valerius, then mounted his horse and rode 
in among the Latins. They at first made way, but 
presently closed in and overpowered him with a 
shower of darts ; and thus he gave for his country 
the life he had once offered for it. 

The victory was won, and was so followed up 
that the Latins were forced to yield to Rome. 
Some of the cities retained their own laws and 
magistrates, but others had Romans with their 
families settled in them, and w r ere called colonies, 
while the Latin people themselves became Roman 
citizens in everything but the power of becoming 
magistrates or voting for them, being, in fact, very 
much what the earliest plebeians had been before 
they acquired any rights. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SAMNITE WARS. 

IN the year 332, just when Alexander the Great 
was making his conquests in the East, his uncle 
Alexander, king of Epirus, brother to his mother 
Olympius, came to Italy, where there were so many 
Grecian citizens south of the Samnites that the foot 
of Italy was called Magna Graecia, or Greater 
Greece. He attacked the Samnites, and the 
Romans were not sorry to see them weakened, and 
made an alliance with him. He stayed in Italy 
about six years, and was then killed. 

To overthrow the Samnites was the great object 
of Rome at this time, and for this purpose they 
offered their protection and alliance to all the cities 
that stood in dread of that people. One of the 
cities was founded by men from the isle of Euboea, 

135 



136 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

who called it Neapolis, or the New City, to distin- 
guish it from the old town near at hand, which they 
called Palaeopolis, or the Old City. The elder city 
held out against the Romans, but was easily over- 
powered, while the new one submitted to Rome ; 
but these southern people were very shallow and 
fickle, and little to be depended on, as they often 
changed sides between the Romans and Samnites. 
In the midst of the siege of Palaeopolis, the year of 
the consulate came to an end, but the Senate, while 
causing two consuls as usual to be elected at home, 
would not recall Publilius Philofrom the siege, and 
therefore appointed him proconsul there. This was 
in 326, and was the beginning of the custom of 
sending the ex-consul as proconsul to command the 
armies or govern the provinces at a distance from 
home. 

In 320, the consul falling sick, a dictator was ap- 
pointed, Lucius Papirius Cursor, one of the most 
stern and severe men in Rome. He was obliged 
by some religious ceremony to return to Rome for 
a time, and he forbade his lieutenant, Quintus 
Fabius Rullianus, to venture a battle in his ab- 
sence. But so good an opportunity offered that 
Fabius attacked the enemy, beat them, and killed 
20,000 men. Then selfishly unwilling to have the 




Combat between a mirmillo and a samnite. 




Combat between a light-armed gladiator and 
a samnite. 



The Samnite Wars. 139 

spoils he had won carried in the dictator's triumph, 
he burnt them all. Papirius arrived in great anger, 
and sentenced him to death for his disobedience ; 
but while the lictors were stripping him, he con- 
trived to escape from their hands among the sol- 
diers, who closed on him, so that he was able to get 
to Rome, where his father called the Senate to- 
gether, and they showed themselves so resolved to 
save his life that Papirius was forced to pardon 
him, though not without reproaching the Romans 
for having fallen from the stern justice of Brutus 
and Manlius. 

Two years later the two consuls, Titus Veturius 
and Spurius Posthumius, were marching into Cam- 
pania, when the Samnite commander, Pontius He- 
rennius, sent»forth people disguised as shepherds to 
entice them into a narrow mountain pass near the 
city of Candium, shut in by thick woods, leading 
into a hollow curved valley, with thick brushwood 
on all sides, and only one way out, which the Sam- 
nites blocked up with trunks of trees. As soon as 
the Romans were within this place the other end 
was blocked in the same way, and thus they were 
all closed up at the mercy of their enemies. 

What was to be done with them ? asked the 
Samnites ; and they went to consult old Herennius, 



140 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the father of Pontius, the wisest man in the nation. 
" Open the way and let them all go free," he said. 

" What ! without gaining any advantage ? " 

" Then kill them all." 

He was asked to explain such extraordinary ad- 
vice. He said that to release them generously 
would be to make them friends and allies for ever ; 
but if the war was to go on, the best thing for 
Samnium would be to destroy such a number of 
enemies at a blow. But the Samnites could not 
resolve upon either plan; so they took a middle 
course, the worst of all, since it only made the Ro- 
mans furious without weakening them. They were 
made to take off all their armor and lay down their 
weapons, and thus to pass out under the yoke, 
namely, three spears set up like a doorway. The 
consuls, after agreeing to a disgraceful peace, had 
to go first, wearing only their undermost garment, 
then all the rest, two and two, and if any one of 
them gave an angry look, he was immediately 
knocked down and killed. They went on in si- 
lence into Campania, where, when night came on, 
they all threw themselves, half-naked, silent, and 
hungry upon the grass. The people of Capua came 
out to help them, and brought them food and 
clothing, trying to do them all honor and comfort 



The Samnite Wars. 



141 



them, but thej would neither look up nor speak. 
And thus they went on to Rome, where everybody 
had put on mourning, and all the ladies went with- 
out their jewels, and the shops in the Forum were 




ANCIENT ROME. 



closed. The unhappy men stole into their houses 
at night one by one, and the consuls would not re- 
sume their office, but two were appointed to serve 
instead for the rest of the year. 



142 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Revenge was all that was thought of, but the 
difficulty was the peace to which the consuls had 
sworn. Posthumius said that if it was disavowed 
by the Senate, he, who had been driven to make it, 
must be given back to the Samnites. So, with his 
hands tied, he was taken back to the Samnite camp 
by a herald and delivered over ; but at that mo- 
ment Posthumius gave the herald a kick, crying 
out, " I am now a Samnite, and have insulted you, 
a Roman herald. This is a just cause of war." 
Pontius and the Samnites were very angry, and 
they said it was an unworthy trick ; but they did 
not prevent Posthumius from going safely back to 
the Romans, who considered him to have quite re- 
trieved his honor. 

A battle was fought, in which Pontius and 7000 
men were forced to lay down their arms and pass 
under the yoke in their turn. The struggle be- 
tween these two fierce nations lasted altogether 
seventy years, and the Romans had many defeats. 
They had other wars at the same time. They 
never subdued Etruria, and in the battle of Senti- 
num, fought with the Gauls, the consul Decius 
Mus, devoted himself exactly as his father had done 
at Vesuvius, and by his death won the victory. 

The Samnite wars may be considered as ending 



The Samnite Wars. 



143 



in 290, when the chief general of Samnium, Pon- 
tius Telesimus, was made prisoner and put to death 
at Rome. The lands in the open country were 
quite subdued, but many Samnites still lived in the 
fastnesses of the Apennines in the south, which 
have ever since been the haunt of wild untamed 
men. 




CHAPTER XVI. 

THE WAR WITH PYEEHUS. 
B.C. 280—271. 

I~N the Grecian History 3 t ou remember that Pyr- 
■'- rhus, king of Epirus, the townsman of Alexander 
the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was 
the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was 
a Spartan colony at the head of the gulf that bears 
its name. It was as proud as its parent, but had 
lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as 
idle and fickle as the other places in that languid 
climate. The Tarentines first maltreated some 
Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then in- 
sulted the ambassador who was sent to complain. 
Then when the terrible Romans were found to be 
really coming to revenge their honor, the Taren- 
tines took fright, and sent to beg Pyrrhus to come 

to their aid. 

144 



The War with Pyrrhus. 



145 



He readily accepted the invitation, and coming 
to Italy with 28,000 men and twenty elephants, 
hoped to conquer the whole country ; but he found 
the Tarentines not to be trusted, and soon weary 
of entertaining him, while they could not keep their 
promises of aid from the other Greeks of Italy. 

The Romans marched 
against him, and there was 
a great battle on the banks 
of the river Siris, where the 
fighting was very hard, but 
when the elephants charged 
the Romans broke and fled, 
and were only saved by 
nightfall from being entire- 
ly destroyed. So great, 
however, had been Pyrrhus' 
loss that he said, "Such 
another victory, and I shall 
have to go back alone to 
Epirus." 

He thought he had better 
treat with the Romans, and sent his favorite coun- 
sellor Kineas to offer to make peace, provided the 
Romans would promise safety to his Italian allies, 
and presents were sent to the senators and their 




PYRRHCTS. 



146 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

wives to induce them to listen favorably. People 
in ancient Greece expected such gifts to back a 
suit ; but Kineas found that nobody in Rome would 
hear of being bribed, though many were not un- 
willing to make peace. Blind old Appius Claudius, 
who had often been consul, caused himself to be 
led into the Senate to oppose it, for it was hard to 
his pride to make peace as defeated men. Kineas 
was much struck with Rome, where he found a 
state of things like the best days of Greece, and, 
going back to his master, told him that the senate- 
house was like a temple, and those who sat there 
like an assembly of kings, and that he feared they 
were fighting with the Hydra of Lerna, for as soon 
as they had destroyed one Roman army another 
had sprung up in its place. 

However, the Romans wanted to treat about the 
prisoners Pyrrhus had taken, and they sent Caius 
Fabricius to the Greek camp for the purpose. 
Kineas reported him to be a man of no wealth, but 
esteemed as a good soldier and an honest man. 
Pyrrhus tried to make him take large presents, but 
nothing would Fabricius touch; and then, in the 
hope of alarming him, in the middle of a conversa- 
tion the hangings of one side of the tent suddenly 
fell, and disclosed the biggest of all the elephants, 



The War ivith Pyrrhus. 



147 



who waved his trunk over Fabricius and trumpeted 
frightfully. The Roman quietly turned round and 
smiled as he said to the king, " I am no more moved 
by your gold than by your great beast." 
, At supper there was a conversation on Greek 
philosophy, of which the Romans as yet knew 




ROMAN ORATOR. 



nothing. When the doctrine of Epicurus was men- 
tioned, that man's life was given to be spent in the 
pursuit of joy, Fabricius greatly amused the com- 
pany by crying out, " O Hercule^ ! grant that the 



148 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Greeks may be heartily of this mind so long as we 
have to fight with them." 

Pyrrhus even tried to persuade Fabricius to enter 
his service, but the answer was, " Sir, I advise you 
not ; for if your people once tasted of my rule, they 
would all desire me to govern them instead of you.'' 
Pyrrhus consented to let the prisoners go home, 
but, if no peace were made, they were to return 
again as soon as the Saturnalia were over ; and 
this was faithfully done. Fabricius was consul the 
next year, and thus received a letter from Pyrrhus' 
physician, offering for a reward to rid the Romans 
of his master by poison. The two consuls sent it 
to the king with the following letter : — " Caius 
Fabricius and Quintus JEmilius, consuls, to Pyr- 
rhus, king, greeting. You choose your friends and 
foes badly. This letter will show that you make 
war with honest men and trust rogues and knaves. 
We tell you, not to win your favor, but lest your 
ruin might bring on the reproach of ending the war 
by treachery instead of force." 

Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to 
death, and by way of acknowledgment released the 
captives, trying again to make peace ; but the 
Romans would accept no terms save that he should 
give up the Tarentines and go back in the same 



The War With Pyrrhus. 149 

ships. A battle was fought in the wood of As 
culum. Decius Mus declared he would devote 
himself like his father and grandfather ; but Pyr- 
hus heard of this, and sent word that he had given 
orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken 
alive and scourged ; and this prevented him. The 
Romans were again forced back by the might of 
the elephants, but not till night fell on them. 
Pyrrhus had been wounded, and hosts of Greeks 
had fallen, among them many of Pyrrhus' chief 
friends. 

He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from 
the Greeks settled there, to defend them from the 
Carthaginians ; but finding them as little satisfac- 
tory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back 
to Tarentum. This time one of the consuls was 
Marcus Curius — called Dentatus, because he had 
been born with teeth in his mouth ■ — ■ a stout, plain 
old Roman, very stern, for when he levied troops 
against Pyrrhus, the first man who refused to serve 
was punished by having his property seized and 
sold. He then marched southward, and at Bene- 
ventum at length entirely defeated Pyrrhus, and 
took four of his elephants. Pyrrhus was obliged 
to return to Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had 
won the day after nine years. 



150 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever 
been known at Rome, with the elephants walking 
in the procession, the first that the Romans had 
ever seen. All the spoil was given up to the com- 
monwealth ; and when, some time after, it was 
asserted that he had taken some for himself, it 
turned out that he had only kept one old wooden 
vessel, which he used in sacrificing to the gods. 

The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very 
ill to Pyrrhus and turned against him. The Ro- 
mans found them so fickle and troublesome that 
they were all reduced in one little war after an- 
other. The Tarentines had to surrender and lose 
their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of 
Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, 
for they were so lazy that they were said to have 
killed all their crowing-birds for waking them too 
early in the morning. All the peninsula of Italy 
now belonged to Rome, and great roads were made 
of paved stones connecting them with it, many of 
which remain to this day, even the first of all, 
called the Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, 
which was made under the direction of the censor 
Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. 
264—240. 

WE are now come to the time when Rome be- 
came mixed up in wars with nations beyond 
Italy. There w^as a great settlement of the Phoe- 
nicians, the merchants of the old world, at Car- 
thage, on the northern coast of Africa, the same 
place at which Virgil afterwards described iEneas 
as spending so much time. Dido, the queen who 
was said to have founded Carthage when fleeing 
from her wicked brother-in-law at Tyre, is thought 
to have been an old goddess, and the religion and 
manners of the Carthaginians were thoroughly 
Phoenician, or, as the Romans called them, Punic. 
They had no king, but a Senate, and therewith 
rulers called by the name that is translated as 
151 



152 Young Folks' History of Rorhe. 

judges in the Bible ; and they did not love war, 
only trade, and spread out their settlements for this 
purpose all over the coast of the Mediterranean, 
from Spain, to the Black Sea, wherever a country 
had mines, wool, dyes, spices, or men to trade with ; 
and their sailors were the boldest to be found any- 
where, and were the only ones who had passed be- 
yond the Pillars of Hercules, namely, the Straits of 
Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean. The}^ built 
handsome cities, and country houses with farms 
and gardens round them, and had all tokens of 
wealth and luxury — ivory, jewels, and spices from 
India, pearls from the Persian Gulf, gold from 
Spain, silver from the Balearic Isles, tin from the 
Scilly Isles, amber from the Baltic ; and they had 
forts to protect their settlements. They generally 
hired the men of the countries, where they settled, 
to fight their battles, sometimes under hired Greek 
captains, but often under generals of their own. 

The first place where \hey did not have every- 
thing their own way was Sicily. The old inhabi- 
tants of the island were called Sicels, a rough peo- 
ple ; but besides these there were a great number 
of Greek settlements, also of Carthaginian ones, 
and these two hated one another. The Cartha- 
ginians tried to overthrow the Greeks, and Pyr- 



The First Punic War. 155 

rims, by coming to help his countrymen, only made 
them more bitter against one another. When he 
went away he exclaimed, " What an arena we 
leave for the Romans and Carthaginians to contend 
upon ! " so sure was he that these two great nations 
must soon fight out the struggle for power. 

The beginning of the struggle was, however, 
brought on by another cause. Messina, the place 
founded loi? c -* ago by the brave exiles of Messene, 
when the Spartans had conquered their state, had 
been seized by a troop of Mamertines, fierce Italians 
from Mamertum ; and these, on being threatened 
by Xiero, king of Syracuse, sent to offer to become 
subjects to the Romans, thus giving them the corn* 
mand of the port which secured the entrance of the 
island. The Senate had great scruples about ac- 
cepting the offer, and supporting a set of mere rob- 
bers ; but the two consuls and all the people could 
not withstand the temptation, and it was resolved 
to assist the Mamertines. Thus began what was 
called the First Punic War. The difficulty was, 
however, want of ships. The Romans had none 
of their own, and though they collected a few from 
their Greek allies in Italy, it was not in time to 
prevent some of the Mamertines from surrendering 
the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, 



156 Young Folks' History of Rom«* 

who thought himself secure, and came down to 
treat with the Roman tribune Claudius, haughtily 
bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with 
the sea, for they should not be allowed so much as 
to wash their hands in it. Claudius, angered at 
this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and he 
agreed to give up the castle on being set free ; but 
he had better have remained a prisoner, for the 
Carthaginians punished him with crucifixion, and 
besieged Messina, but in vain. 

The Romans felt that a fleet was necessary, and 
set to work to build war galleys on the pattern of a 
Carthaginian one which had been wrecked upon 
their coast. While a hundred ships were building, 
oarsmen were trained to row on dry land, and in 
two months the fleet put to sea. Knowing that 
there was no chance of being able to fight accord- 
ing to the regular rules of running the beaks of 
their galleys into the sides of those of their enemies, 
they devised new plans of letting heavy weights de- 
scend on the ships of the opposite fleet, and then of 
letting drawbridges down by which to board them. 
The Carthaginians, surprised and dismayed, when 
thus attacked off Mylse by the consul Duilius, were 
beaten and chased to Sardinia, where their unhappy 
commander was nailed to a cross by his own sot 



The First Punic War. 157 

diers ; while Duilius not only received in Rome a 
grand triumph for his first naval victory, but it was 
decreed that he should never go out into the city at 
night without a procession of torch-bearers. 

The Romans now made up their minds to send 
an expedition to attack the Carthaginian power not 
only in Sicily but in Africa, and this was placed 
under the command of a sturdy plebeian consul., 
Marcus Attilius Regulus. He fought a great bat- 
tle with the Carthaginian fleet on his way, and he 
had even more difficulty with his troops, who greatly 
dreaded the landing in Africa as a place of unknown 
terror. He landed, however, at some distance 
from the city, and did not at once advance on it. 
When he did, according to the story current at 
Rome, he encountered on the banks of the River 
Bagrada an enormous serpent, whose poisonous 
breath killed all who approached it, and on whose 
scales darts had no effect. At last the machines 
for throwing huge stones against city walls were used 
against it ; its backbone was broken, and it was at 
last killed, and its skin sent to Rome. 

The Romans met other enemies* whom they de- 
feated, and gained much plunder. The Senate, 
understanding that the Carthaginians were cooped 
up within their walls, recalled half the army. Re- 



158 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

gulus wished much, to return, as the slave who 
tilled his little farm had run away with his plough, 
and his wife was in distress ; but he was so valu- 
able that he could not be recalled, and he remained 
and soon took Tunis. The Carthaginians tried to 
win their gods' favor back by offering horrid human 
sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a 
Spartan general named Xanthippus, who defeated 
the Romans, chiefly by means of the elephants, and 
made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated 
the Carthaginians so much as to believe them capa- 
ble of any wickedness, declared that in their jeal- 
ousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent him home to 
Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea. 
However, the Romans, after several disasters in 
Sicily, gained a great victory near Panormus, cap- 
turing one hundred elephants, which were brought 
to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might 
lose their fear of them. The Carthaginians were 
weakened enough to desire peace, and they sent 
Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return 
if he did not succeed. He came to the outskirts of 
the city, but would not enter. He said he was no 
Roman pro-consul, but the slave of Carthage. 
However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he 
gave the message, but added that the Romans 




ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE. 



The First Punic War. 161 

ought not to accept these terms, but to stand out 
for much better ones, giving such reasons that the 
whole people was persuaded. He was entreated tc 
remain and not meet the angry men of Carthage ; 
but nothing would persuade him to break his word, 
and he went back. The Romans told dreadful 
stories of the treatment he met with — how his 
eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, 
and at last he was nailed up in a barrel lined with 
spikes and rolled down hill. Some say that this 
was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners 
at Rome were as savagely treated ; but at any rate 
the constancy of Regulus has always been a prov- 
erb. 

The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius 
family was in command at Trepan um, in Sicily, 
when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a 
battle the Romans always consulted the sacred 
fowls that were carried with the army. Claudius 
was told that their augury was against a battle — 
they would not eat. " Then let them drink," he 
cried, and threw them into the sea. His impiety, as 
all felt it, was punished by an utter defeat, and he 
killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went 
on by land and sea all over and around Sicily, till 
at the end of twenty-four years peace was made, 



162 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

just after another great sea-fight, in which Rome 
had the victory. She made tli3 Carthaginians give 
up all they held in Sicily, restore their prisoners, 
make a large payment, and altogether humble their 
claims ; thus beginning a most bitter hatred towards 
the conquerors, who as greatly hated and despised 
them. Thus ended the First Punic War. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GAUL. 

240—219, 

AFTER the end of the Punic war, Carthage 
fell into trouble with her hired soldiers, and 
did not interfere with the Romans for a long time, 
while they went on to arrange the government of 
Sicily into what they called a province, which was 
ruled by a propraetor for a year after his magistracy 
at home. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse indeed 
still remained as an ally of Rome, and Messina and 
a few other cities were allowed to choose their own 
magistrates and govern themselves. 

Soon after, Sardinia and Corsica were given up 
to the Romans by the hired armies of the Cartha- 
ginians, and as the natives fought hard against 
Rome, when they were conquered they were for the 
163 



164 Young Folks 9 History of Home. 

most part sold as slaves. These two islands like- 
wise had a propraetor. 

The Romans now had all the peninsula south of 
themselves, and as far north as Ariminim (now 
shortened into Rimini), but all beyond belonged to 
the Gauls — the Cisalpine Gauls, or Gauls on this 
side the Alps, as the Romans called them ; while 
those on the other side were called Transalpine 
Gauls, or Gauls across the Alps. These northern 
Gauls were gathering again for an inroad on the 
south, and in the midst of the rumors of this danger 
there was a great thunderstorm at Rome, and the 
Capitol was struck by lightning. The Sybilline 
books were searched into to see what this might 
mean, and a yarning was found, " Beware of the 
Gauls." Moreover, there was a saying that the 
Greeks and Gaals should one day enjoy the Forum : 
but the Romans fancied they could satisfy this 
prophecy by burying a man and woman of ea^h 
nation, slaves, in the middle of the Forum, and then 
they prepared to attack the Gauls in their own coun- 
try before the inroad could be made. There was 
a great deal of hard fighting, lasting for years ; and 
in the course of it the consul, Cains Flaminius, be- 
gan the great road which has since been called after 
him the Flaminian Way, and was the great north- 



Conquest of Cisalpine Caul. 



165 



ern road from Rome, as the Appian Way was the 
southern. 

The great hero of the war was Marcus Claudius 
Mareellus, who had already made himself known 
for his dauntless courage. As consul, he fought a 




THE WOUNDED GAUL. 



desperate battle on the banks of the Po with the 
Gauls of both sides the Alps, and himself killed 
their king or chief, Viridomar. He brought the 
spoils to Rome, and hung them in the Temple of 
Jupiter. It was only the third time in the history 
of Rome that such a thing had been done. Cisal- 
pine Gaul was thus subdued, and another road was 



166 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

made to secure it ; while in the short peace that 
followed the gates of the Temple of Janus were 
shut, having stood open ever since the reign of 
Numa. 

The Romans were beginning to make their wor- 
ship the same with that of the Greeks. They sent 
offerings to Greek temples, said that their old gods 
were the same as those of the Greeks, only under 
different names, and sent an embassy to Epidaurus 
to ask for a statue of Esculapius, the god of medi- 
cine and son of Phoebus Apollo. The emblem oi 
Esculapius was a serpent, and tame serpents were 
kept about his temple at Epidaurus. One of these 
glided into the Roman galley that had come for 
the statue, and it was treated with great respect by 
all the crew until they sailed up the Tiber, when it 
made its way out of the vessel and swam to the 
island which had been formed by the settling of the 
mud round the heap of corn that had been thrown 
into the river when Porsena wasted the country. 
This was supposed to mean that the god himself 
took possession of the place, and a splendid temple 
there rose in his honor. 

Another imitation of the Greeks which came 
into fashion at this time had a sad effect on the 
Romans. The old funerals in Greek poems had 



Conquest of Cisalpine Caul. 167 

ended by games and struggles between swordsmen. 
Two brothers of the Brutus family first showed off 
such a game at their father's funeral, and it -became 
a regular custom, not only at funerals, but when- 
ever there was need to entertain the people, to 
show off fights of swordsmen. The soldier captives 
from conquered nations were used in this way ; 
and some persons kept schools of slaves, who were 
trained for these fights and called gladiators. The 
battle was a real one, with sharp weapons, for life 
or death ; and when a man was struck down, he 
was allowed to live or sentenced to death according 
as the spectators turned down or turned up their 
thumbs. The Romans fancied that the sight trained 
them to be brave, and to despise death and wounds 
but the truth was that it only made them hard 
hearted, and taught them to despise other people's 
pain — a very different thing from despising their 
own. 

Another thing that did great harm was the mak- 
ing it lawful for a man to put away a wife who had 
no children. This ended by making the Romans 
much less careful to have one good wife, and the 
Roman ladies became much less noble and excellent 
than they had been in the good old days. 

In the meantime, the Carthaginians, having lost 



168 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

the three islands, began to spread their settlements 
further in Spain, where their chief colony was New 
Carthage, or, as we call it, Carthagena. The moun- 
tains were full of gold mines, and the Iberians, the 
nation who held them, were brave and warlike, so 




HAimiBAI, s vow. 

that there was much fighting to train up fresh 
armies. Hamilcar, the chief general in command 
there, had four sons, whom he said were lion whelps 
being bred up against Rome. He took them with 
him to Spain, and at a great sacrifice for the success 



Conquest of Cisalpine Graul. 169 

of his arms the youngest and most promising, Han- 
nibal, a boy of nine years old, was made to lay his 
hand on the altar of Baal and take an oath that he 
would always be the enemy of the Romans. Ham- 
ilcar was killed in battle, but Hannibal grew up to 
be all that he had hoped, and at twenty-six was in 
command of the army. He threatened the Iberians 
of Saguntum, who sent to ask help from Rome. 
A message was sent to him to forbid him to disturb 
the ally of Rome ; but he had made up his mind 
for war, and never even asked the Senate of Car- 
thage what was to be done, but went on with the 
siege of Saguntum. Rome was busy with a war in 
Illyria, and could send no help, and the Saguntines 
held out with the greatest bravery and constancy, 
month after month, till they were all on the point 
of starvation, then kindled a great fire, slew all 
their wives and children, and let Hannibal win 
nothing but a pile of smoking ruins. 

Again the Romans sent to Carthage to complain, 
but the Senate there had made up their minds that 
war there must be, and that it was a good time 
when Rome had a war in Illyria on her hands, and 
, Cisalpine Gaul hardly subdued ; and they had such 
a general as Hannibal, though they did not know 
what a wonderful scheme he had in his mind, 



170 



Young Folks'' History of Rome. 



namely, to make his way by land from Spain to 
Italy, gaining the help of the Gauls, and stirring 
up all those nations of Italy who had fought so 
long against Rome. His march, which marks the 
beginning of the Second Punic War, started from 




IN THE PYRENEES. 



the banks of the Ebro in the beginning of the sum- 
mer of 219. His army was 20,000 foot and 12,000 
horse, partly Carthaginian, partly Gaul and Iberian. 
The horsemen were Moorish, and he had thirty- 
seven elephants. He left his brother Hasdrubal 
with 10,000 men at the foot of the Pyrenees and 



Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 171 

pushed on, but lie could not reach the Alps before 
the late autumn, and his passage is one of the great- 
est wonders of history. Roads there were none, 
and he had to force his way up the passes of the 
Little St. Bernard through snow and ice, terrible to 
the men and animals of Africa, and fighting all the 
way, so that men and horses perished in great num- 
bers, and only seven of the elephants were left when 
he at length descended into the plains of Northern 
Italy, where he hoped the Cisalpine Gauls would 
welcome him. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
219. 

WHEN the Romans heard that Hannibal had 
passed the Pyrenees, they had two armies 
on foot, one under Publius Cornelius Scipio, which 
w T as to go to Spain, and the other Mnder Tiberius 
Sempronius Longus, to attack Africa. They 
changed their plan, and kept Sempronius to defend 
Italy, w^hile Scipio went by sea to Marsala, a Greek 
colony in Gaul, to try to stop Hannibal at the 
Rhone ; but he was too late, and therefore, sending 
on most of his army to Spain, he came back him- 
self with his choicest troops. With these he tried 
to stop the enemy from crossing the river Ticinus, 
but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his 
life was only saved by the bravery of his son, who 
led him out of the battle. 

172 



The Second Punic War, 175 

Before he was able to join the army again, Sem- 
pronius had fought another battle with Hannibal 
on the banks of the Trebia and suffered a terrible 
defeat. But winter now came on, and the Cartha- 
ginians found it very hard to bear in the marshes 
of the Arno. Hannibal himself was so ill that he 
only owed his life to the last of his elephants, which 
carried him safely through when he was almost 
blind, and in the end he lost an eye. \yi the spring 
he went on ravaging the country in hopes to make 
the two new consuls, Flaminius and Servilius, fight 
with him, but they were too cautious, until at last 
Flaminius attacked him in a heavy fog on the 
shore of Lake Trasimenus. It is said that an earth- 
quake shook the ground, and that the eager war- 
riors never perceived it ; but again the Romans 
lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dread- 
ful slaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no 
quarter to a Roman. The only thing that was 
hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etrus- 
cans, nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor 
of Hannibal ; and though he was now very near 
Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help of 
the people around to bring him supplies, so he only 
marched southwards, hoping to gain the support of 
the Greek colonies. A dictator was appointed, 



176 Young Folks History of Borne. 

Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by 
strengthening all the garrisons in the towns and 
cutting off all provisions, he should wear the enemy 
out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was 
called Cunctator, or the Delayer ; but at last he 
had the Carthaginians enclosed as in a trap in the 
valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut 
them off, posting men in ambush to fall on them on 
their morning's march. Hannibal guessed that this 
must be the plan ; and at night he had the cattle 
in the camp collected, fastened torches to their 
horns, and drove them up the hills. The Romans, 
fancying themselves surrounded by the enemy, 
came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the 
camp, and Hannibal and his army safely escaped. 
This mischance made the Romans weary of the 
Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and 
two consuls came in, though one of them, Lucius 
JEmilius Paulus, would have gone on in the same 
cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without a 
battle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who com- 
manded on alternate days with him, was determined 
on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that it was 
fought on the plain of Cannae, where there was 
plenty of space to use his Moorish horse. It was 
Varro's day of command, and he dashed at the 



The Second Punic War. 177 

centre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space 
for him, then closed in on both sides with his 
terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of the 
Romans. The last time that the consul iEmilius 
was seen was by a tribune named Lentulus, who 
found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, 
and would have given him his own horse to escape, 
but JEmilius answered that he had no mind to have 
to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had rather 
die. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode 
off, and looking back, saw his consul fall, pierced 
with darts. So many Romans had been killed, that 
Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 
10,000 of the gold rings worn by the knights. 

Hannibal was only five days' march beyond 
Rome, and his officers wanted him to turn back and 
attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but he 
could not expect to succeed without more aid from 
home, and he wanted to win over the Greek cities 
of the south ; so he wintered in Campania, waiting 
for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or 
from Spain, where his brother Mago was preparing 
an army. But the Carthaginians did not care 
about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no 
help ; and Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, 
with a Roman army in Spain, were watching Mago 



178 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



and preventing him from marching, until at last he 
gave them battle and defeated and killed them 
both. But he was not allowed to go to Italy to 
his brother, who, in the meantime, found his army 
so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but 
languid Campania, that the Romans declared the 
luxuries of Capua were their best allies. He 
stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the 
alliance of the king of Macedon, and stirring up 
Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, who was consul for 
the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which 
made a famous defence, for it contained Archimedes, 
the greatest mathematician of his time, who devised 
wonderful machines for crushing the besiegers in 
unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a 
weak part of the walls and 
surprised the citizens. He 
had given orders that Archi- 
medes should be saved, but a 
soldier broke into the philoso- 
pher's room without knowing 
him, and found him so intent 
on his study that he had never 
heard the storming of the city. 
The man brandished his sword. "Only wait," 
muttered Archimedes, " till I have found out my 




ARCHIMEDES. 



The Second Punic War. 179 

problem - 9 " but the man, not understanding him, 
killed him. 

Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself 
there with wonderful skill, though with none of the 
hopes with which he had set out. His brother 
Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an 
army to help him, but was met on the river Metaurus 
by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, and slain. His 
head was cut off by Nero's order, and throAvn into 
Hannibal's camp to give tidings of his fate. 

Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, 
where he gained great advantages, winning the 
' friendship of the Iberians. ; and gaining town after 
* k town till Mago had little left but Gades and the 
extreme south. Scipio was one of the noblest of 
the Romans, brave, pious, and what was more un- 
usual, of such sweet and winning temper, that it 
was said of him that wherever he went he might 
have been a king. 

On returning to Rome, he showed the Senate 
that the best way to get Hannibal out of Italy was 
to attack Africa. Cautious old Fabius doubted, 
but Scipio was sent to Sicily, where he made an aP 
liance with Massinissa, the Moorish king in Africa ; 
and, obtaining leave to carry out his plan, he was 
sent thither, and so alarmed Carthage, that Hanni 



180 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



bal was recalled to defend his own country, where 
he had not been since he was a child. A great 
battle took place at Zama between him and Han- 
nibal, in which Scipio was the conqueror, and the 
loss of Carthage was so terrible that the Romans 
were ready to have marched in on her and made 
her their subject, but Scipio persuaded them to be 
forbearing. Carthage was to pay an immense 
tribute, and swear never to make war on any ally 
of Rome. And thus ended the Second Punic War, 
in the year 20L 




CHAPTER XX. 

THE FIRST EASTERN WAR. 

215—183. 

SCIPIO remained in Africa till he had arranged 
matters and won such a claim to Massinissa's 
gratitude that this king of Numidia was sure to 
watch over the interests of Rome. Scipio then 
returned home, and entered Rome with a grand 
triumph, all the nobler for himself that he did not 
lead Hannibal in his chains. He had been too 
generous to demand that so brave an enemy should 
be delivered up to him. He received the surname 
of Africanus, and was one of the most respected 
and beloved of Romans. He was the first who be- 
gan to take up Greek learning and culture, and to 
exchange the old Roman ruggedness for the graces 
of philosophy and poetry. Indeed the Romans 

181 



182 Young Folks' History of Romeo 

were beginning to have much to do with the 
Greeks, and the war they entered upon now was 
the first for the sake of spreading their own power. 
All the former ones had been in self-defence, and 
the new one did in fact spring out of the Punic 
war, for the Carthaginians had tried to persuade 
Philip, king of Macedon, to follow in the track of 
Pyrrhus, and come and help Hannibal in Southern 
Italy. The Romans had kept him off by stirring 
up the robber iEtolians against him ; and when he 
began to punish these wild neighbors, the Romans 
leagued themselves with the old Greek cities which 
Macedon oppressed, and a great war took place. 

Titus Quinctius Flaminius commanded in Greece 
for four years, first as consul and then as proconsul. 
His crowning victory was at Cynocephalse, or the 
Dogshead Rocks, where he so broke the strength 
of Macedon that at the Isthmian games he pro- 
claimed the deliverance of Greece, and in their joy 
the people crowded round him with crowns and 
garlands, and shouted so loud that birds in the air 
were said to have dropped down at the sound. 

Macedon had cities in Asia Minor, and the king 
of Syria's enemy, Antiochus the Great, hoped to 
master them, and even to conquer Greece by the 
help of Hannibal, who had found himself unable to 



The First Eastern War. 183 

live in Carthage after his defeat, and was wander- 
ing about to give his services to any one who was 
a foe of Rome. 

As Rome took the part of Philip, as her subject 
and ally, there was soon full scope for his efforts ; 
but the Syrians were such wretched troops that 
even Hannibal could do nothing with them, and 
the king himself would not attend to his advice, 
but wasted his time in pleasure in the isle of Eu- 
boea. So the consul Acilius first beat them at 
Thermopylae, and then, on Lucius Cornelius Scipio 
being sent to conduct the war, his great brother 
Africanus volunteered to go with him as his lieu- 
tenant, and together they followed Antiochus into 
Asia Minor, and gained such advantages that the 
Syrian was obliged to sue for peace. The Romans 
replied by requiring of him to give up all Asia 
Minor as far as Mount Tarsus, and in despair he 
risked a battle in Magnesia, and met with a total 
defeat ; 80,000 Greeks and Syrians being over- 
thrown by 50,000 Romans. Neither Africanus nor 
Hannibal were present in this battle, since the first 
was ill, and the second was besieged in a city in 
Pamphylia ; but while terms of peace were being 
made, the two are said have met on friendly terms, 
and Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thought the 



184 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

greatest of generals. "Alexander," was the answer. 
" Whom the next greatest ? " " Pyrrhus." "Whom 
do you rank as the third ? " " Myself," said Han- 
nibal. "But if you had beaten me?" asked 
Scipio. " Then I would have placed myself before 
Alexander." 



HANNIBAL. 



The Romans insisted that Hannibal should be 
dismissed by Antiochus, though Scipio declared that 
this was ungenerous ; but they dreaded his never- 
ceasing enmity ; and when he took refuge with the 
king of Bothnia, they still required that lie should 
be given up or driven away. On this, Hannibal, 



The First Eastern War. 185 

worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his own 
life by poison, saying he would rid the Romans of 
their fear of an old man. 

The provinces taken from Antiochus were given 
to Eumenes, king of Pergamus, who was to reign 
over them as tributary to the Romans. Lucius 
Scipio received the surname of Asiaticus, and the 
two brothers returned to Rome ; but they had been 
too generous and merciful to the conquered to suit 
the grasping spirit that had begun to prevail at 
Rome, and directly after his triumph Lucius was 
accused of having taken to himself an undue share 
of the spoil. His brother was too indignant at the 
shameful accusation to think of letting him justify 
himself, but tore up his accounts in the face of the 
people. The tribune, Naevius, thereupon spitefully 
called upon him to give an account of the spoil of 
Carthage taken twenty years before. The only re- 
ply he gave was to exclaim, " This is the day of 
the victory of Zama. Let us give thanks to the 
gods for it; " and he led all that was noble and 
good in Rome with him to the temple of Jupiter 
and offered the anniversary sacrifice. No one 
durst say another word against him or his brother ; 
but he did not choose to remain among the citizens 
who had thus insulted him, but went away to his 



186 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

estate at Liternum, and when lie died, desired to be 
buried there, saying that he would not even leave 
his bones to his ungrateful country. The Cornelian 
family was the only one among the higher Romans 
who buried instead of burning their dead. He left 
no son, only a daughter, who was married to Ti- 
berius Sempronius Gracchus, a brave officer who 
was among: those who were sent to finish reducing: 
Spain. It was a long, terrible war, fought city by 
city, inch by inch ; but Gracchus is said to have 
taken no less than three hundred fortresses. But 
he was a milder conqueror than some of the Ro- 
mans, and tried to tame and civilize the wild races 
instead of treating them with the terrible severity 
shown by Marcus Porcius Cato, the sternest of all 
old Romans. However, by the year 178 Spain 
had been reduced to obedience, and the cities and 
the coast were in good order, though the mountains 
harbored fierce tribes alwaj^s ready for revolt. 

Gracchus died early, and Cornelia, his widow, 
devoted herself to the cause of his three children, 
refusing to be married again, which was very un- 
common in a Roman lady. When a lady asked her 
to show her her ornaments, she called her two boys, 
Tiberius and Caius, and their sister Sempronia, and 
said, " These are my jewels;" and when she was 



The First Eastern War. 187 

complimented on being the daughter of Africanus, 
she said that the honor she should care more for 
was the being called " the mother of the Gracchi." 
It was not, however, one of her sons that was 
chosen to carry on their grandfather's name and 
the sacrifices of the Cornelian family. Probably 
Caius was not born when Scipio died, for his choice 
had been the second son of his sister and of Lucius 
iEmilius Paulus (son of him who died at Carmse.) 
This child being adopted by his uncle, was called 
Publius Cornelius Scipio JEmilianus, and when he 
grew up was to marry his cousin Sempronia. 




CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, CORINTH, AND 
CARTHAGE. 

179—145. 

IT was a great change when Rome, which to the 
Greeks of Pyrrhus' time had seemed so rude 
and simple, was thought such a school of policy 
that Greek and half-Greek kings sent their sons to 
be educated there, partly as hostages for their own 
peaceableness, and partly to learn the spirit of 
Roman rule. The first king who did this was 
Philip of Macedon, who sent his son Demetrius to 
he brought up at Rome 3 but when he came back, 
his father and brother were jealous of him, and he 
was soon put to death. 

When his brother Perseus came to the throne, 
there was hatred between him and the Romans, and 

ere long he was accused of making war on their 
188 



The Conquest of Greece. 189 

allies. He offered to make peace, but they replied 
that they would hear nothing till he had laid down 
his arms, and this he would not do, so that Lucius 
iEmilius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was 
sent to reduce him. As JEmilius came into his 
own house after receiving the appointment, he met 
his little daughter crying, and when he asked her 
what was the matter, she answered, " Oh, father, 
Perseus is dead ! ' 1 She meant her little dog, but 
he kissed her and thanked her for the good omen. 
He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle 
of Pydna, after which Perseus was obliged to give 
himself up into the hands of the Romans, begging, 
however, not to be made to walk in iEmilius' tri- 
umph. The general answered that he might obtain 
that favor from himself, meaning that he could die 
by his own hand ; but Perseus did not take the 
hint, which seems to us far more shocking than it 
did to a Roman ; he did walk in the triumph, and 
died a few years after in Italy. iEmilius' two sons 
were with him throughout this campaign, though 
still boys under Polybius, their Achaian tutor. 
Macedon was divided into four provinces, and be- 
came entirely subject to Rome. 

The Greeks of the Achaian League began to have 
quarrels among themselves, and when the Romans 



190 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



interfered a fierce spirit broke out, and they wanted 
to have their old freedom, forgetting how entirely 
unable they were to stand against the power of the 
Romans. Caius Csecilius Metellus, a man of one of 
the best and most gracious Roman families, was 
patient with them and did his best to pacify them, 
being most unwilling to ruin the noble "old historical 
cities; but these foolish Greeks fancied that his 





COilINTH. 



kindness showed weakness, and forced on the war 
sending a troop to guard the pass of Thermopylae, 
but they were swept away. Unfortunately, Metel- 
lus had to go out of office, and Lucius Mummius, a 
fierce, rude, and ignorant soldL r , came in his stead 
to complete the conquest. Corinth was taken, ut- 
terly ruined and plundered throughout, and a huge 



Conquest of Corinth and Carthage. 191 

amount of treasure was sent to Rome, as well as 
pictures and statues famed all over the world. 
Mummius was very much laughed at for having 
been told they must be carried in his triumph ; and 
yet, not understanding their beauty, he told the 
sailors to whose charge they were given, that if they 
were lost, new ones must be supplied. However, 
he was an honest man, who did not help himself 
out of the plunder, as far too many were doing. 
After that, Achaia was made a Roman province. 

At this time the third and last Punic war was 
going on. The old Moorish king, Massinissa, had 
been continually tormenting Carthage ever since 
she had been weak, and declaring that Phoenician 
strangers had no business in Africa. The Cartha- 
ginians, who had no means of defending themselves, 
complained ; but the Romans would not listen, 
hoping, perhaps, that they would be goaded at last 
into attacking the Moor, and thus giving a pretext 
for a war. Old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was 
sent on a message to Carthage, came back declaring 
that it was not safe to let so mighty a city of ene- 
mies stand so near. He brought back a branch of 
figs fresh and good, which he showed the Senate in 
proof of how near she was, and ended each sen- 
tence with saying, "Delenda est Carthago" (Car- 



192 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

thageis to be wiped out). He died that same year 
at ninety years old, having spent most of his life in 
making a staunch resistance to the easj r and lux- 
urious fashions that were coming in with wealth 
and refinement. One of his sayings always de- 
serves to be remembered. When he was opposing 
a law giving permission to the ladies to wear gold 
and purple, he said they would all be vying with 
one another, and that the poor would be ashamed of 
not making as good an appearance as the rich. 
"And," said he, " she who blushes for doing what 
she ought, will soon cease to blush for doing what 
she ought not." 

One wonders he did not see that to have no 
enemy near at hand to guard against was the very 
worst thing for the hardy, plain old ways he was 
so anxious to keep up. However, Carthage was to 
be wiped out, and Scipio iEmilianus was sent to do 
the terrible work. He defeated Hasdrubal, the 
last of the Carthaginian generals, and took the cit- 
adel of Byrsa ; but though all hope was over, the 
city held out in utter desperation. Weapons were 
forged out of household implements, even out of 
gold and silver, and the women twisted their long 
hair into bow-strings; and when the walls were 
stormed, they fought from street to street and house 



Coyiquest of Corinth and Carthage, 193 

to house, so that the Romans gained little but ruins 
and dead bodies. Carthage and Corinth fell on the 
same day of the year 179. 

Part of Spain still had to be subdued, and Scipio 
JEmilianus was sent thither. The city of Numan- 
tia, with only 5000 inhabitants, endured one of 
those long, hopeless sieges for which Spanish cities 
have in all times been remarkable, and was only 
taken at last when almost every citizen had per- 
ished. 

At the same time, Attalus, king of Pergamus in 
Asia Minor, being the last of his race, beqeathed 
his dominions to the Romans, and thus gave them 
their first solid footing there. 

All this was altering Roman manners much. 
Weak as the Greeks were, their old doings of every 
kind were still the admiration of every one, and 
the Romans, who had always heen rough, straight- 
forward doers, began to . wish to learn of them to 
think. All the wealthier families had Greeks for 
tutors for their sons, and expected them to talk and 
write the language, and study the philosophy and 
poetry till they should be as familiar with it as if 
they were Greeks themselves. Unluckily, the 
Greeks themselves had fallen from their earnest- 
ness and greatness, so that there was not much to 



194 Young Folks' History of Home. 

be learnt of them now but vain deceit and bad 
taste. 

Rich Romans, too, began to get most absurdly 
luxurious. ' They had splendid villas on the Italian 
hill-sides, where they went to spend the summer 
when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had 
beautiful gardens, with courts paved with mosaic, 
and fish-ponds for the pet fish for which many had 
a passion. One man w^as laughed at for having 
shed tears when his favorite fish died, and he re- 
torted by saying that it was more than his accuser 
had done for his wife. 

Their feasts were as luxurious as they could 
make them, in spite of laws' to keep them within 
bounds. Dishes of nightingales' tongues, of fatted 
dormice, and even of snails, were among their food ; 
and sometimes a stream was made to flow along 
the table, containing the living companion of the 
mullet which served as part of the meal. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE GRACCHI. 

137—122. 

YOUNG Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the 
eldest of Cornelia's jewels, was sent in the 
year 137 to join the Roman army in Spain. As he 
went through Etruria, which, as every one knew, 
had been a thickly peopled, fertile country in old 
times, he was shocked to see its dreariness and 
desolation. Instead of farms and vineyards, there 
were great bare spaces of land, where sheep, kids, 
or goats were feeding. These vast tracts belonged 
to Romans, who kept slaves to attend to the flocks ; 
while all the corn that was used in Rome came 
from Sicily or Africa, and the poorer Romans lived 
in the city itself — idle men, chiefly trusting to 

distributions of corn, and unable to work for them- 
195 



196 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



selves because they had no ground to till ; and as 
to trades and handicrafts, the rich men had every- 
thing they wanted made in their pwn houses by 
their slaves. 

No wonder the Romans were losing their old 




CORNELIA AKD HER SONS. 



character. This was the very thing that the Li- 
cinian law had been intended to prevent, by for- 
bidding any citizen to have more than a certain 
quantity of land, and giving the state the power of 
resuming it. The law was still there, but it had 



The Gracchi. 197 

been disused and forgotten ; estates had been 
gathered into the hands of families and handed 
down, till now, though there were 400,000 citizens, 
only 2,000 were men of property. 

While Tiberius was serving in Spain, he decided 
on his plan: As his family was plebeian, he could 
be a tribune of the people, and as soon as he came 
home he stood and was elected. Then he proposed 
reviving the Licinian law, that nobody should have 
more than 500 acres, and that the rest should be 
divided among those who had nothing, leaving, 
however, a larger portion to those who had many 
children. 

There was, of course, a terrible uproar ; the popu- 
lace clamoring for their rights, and the rich trying 
to stop the measure. They bribed one of the other 
tribunes to forbid it : but there was a fight, in 
which Tiberius prevailed, and he and his young 
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Clau- 
dius, were appointed as triumvers to see the law 
carried out. Then the rich men followed their old 
plan of spreading reports among the people that 
Tiberius wanted to make himself a king, and had 
accepted a crown and purple robe from some foreign 
envoy. When his year of office was coming to an 
end, he sought to be elected tribune again, but the 



198 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

patricians said it was against the law. There was 
a great tumult, in the course of which he put his 
hand to his head, either to guard it from a blow or 
to beckon his friends. " He demands the diadem," 
shouted his enemies, and there was a great strug- 
gle, in which three hundred people w r ere killed. 
Tiberius tried to take refuge in the Temple oJ 
Jupiter, but the doors were closed against him \ he 
stumbled, -was knocked down with a club, and 
killed. 

However, the Sempronian law had been made, 
and the people wanted, of course, to have it carried 
out, while the nobles wanted it to be a dead letter. 
Scipio iEmilianus, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, 
had been in Spain all this time, but he had so much 
disapproved of Tiberius' doings that he was said to 
have exclaimed, on hearing of his death, " So perish 
all who do the like." But when he came home, he 
did so much to calm and quiet matters,that there was 
a cry to make him Dictator, and let him settle the 
whole matter. Young Caius Gracchus, who thought 
the cause would thus be lost, tried to prevent the 
choice by fixing on him the name of tyrant. To 
which Scipio calmly replied, " Rome's enemies may 
well wish me dead, for they know that while I live 
Rome cannot perish." 



The Qracc'ki. 199 

When he went home, he shut himself into his 
room to prepare his discourse for the next day, but 
in the morning he was found dead, without a wound, 
though his slaves declared he had been murdered. 
Some suspected his wife Sempronia, others even 
her mother Cornelia, but the Senate would not 
have the matter enquired into. He left no child, 
and the Africanus line of Cornelius ended with 
him, 

Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than his 
brother, and was elected tribune as soon as he was 
old enough. He was full of still greater schemes 
than his brother. His mother besought him to be 
warned by his brother's? fate, but he was bent on 
his objects, and carried some of them out. He had 
the Sempronian law reaffirmed, though he could 
not act on it ; but in the meantime he began a 
regular custom of having corn served out to the 
poorer citizens, and found work for them upon 
roads and bridges ; also he caused the state to 
clothe the soldiers, instead of their doing it at their 
own expense. Another scheme which he first pro- 
posed was to make the Italians of the countries now 
one with Roman territory into citizens, with votes 
like the Romans themselves; but this again an- 



200 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

gered the patricians, who saw they should be 
swamped by numbers and lose their power. 

He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians 
on the ruins of Carthage, and when his tribuneship 
was over he went to Africa to see about it ; but 
when he came home the patricians had arranged an 
attack on him, and he was insulted by the lictor of 
the consul Opimius. The patricians collected on 
one side, the poorer sort around Caius on the 
Aventine Hill ; but the nobles were the strongest, 
the plebeians fled, and Caius withdrew with one 
slave into a sacred grove, whence he hoped to reach 
the Tiber ; but the wood was surrounded, his re- 
treat was cut off, and he <M)mmanded the slave to 
kill him that he might not fall alive into the hands 
of his enemies, after which the poor faithful fellow 
killed himself, unable to bear the loss of his master. 
The weight of Caius' head in gold had been prom- 
ised by the Senate, and the man who found the 
body was said to have taken out the brains and 
filled it up with lead that his reward might be 
larger. Three thousand men were killed in this 
riot, ten times as many as at Tiberius 9 death. 

Opimius was so proud of having overthrown 
Caius, that he had a medal struck with Hercules 
slaying the monsters. Cornelia, broken-hearted, 



The Grracchi. 



201 



retired to a country-house ; but in a few years the 
feeling turned, great love was shown to the memory 
of the two brothers, statues were set up in their 
honor, and when Cornelia herself died, her statue 
was inscribed with the title she had coveted, " The 
mother of the Gracchi." 

Things were indeed growing worse and worse. 




^^aSs^^ 



mT- «M» 



ROMAN CENTURION. 



The Romans were as brave as ever in the field, and 
were sure in the end to conquer any nation they came 
in contact with ; but at home, the city was full of 
overgrown rich men, with huge hosts of slaves, and 
of turbulent poor men, who only cared for their 



202 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

citizenship for the sake of the corn they gained by 
it, and the games exhibited by those who stood for 
a magistracy. Immense sums were spent in hiring 
gladiators and bringing wild animals to be baited 
for their amusement ; and afterwards, when sent 
out to govern the provinces, the expenses w T ere re- 
paid by cruel grinding and robbing the people of 
the conquered states. 




CHAPTER XXIIL 

THE WARS OF MARIUS. 

106—98. 

AFTER the death of Massinissa, king of Nu- 
midia, the ally of the Romans, there were 
disputes among his grandsons, and Jugartha, whom 
they held to have the least right, obtained the 
kingdom. The commander of the army sent 
against him was Cams Marius, who had risen from 
being a free Roman peasant in the village of Ar- 
pinum, but serving under Scipio JEmilianus, had 
shown such ability, that when some one was won- 
dering where they would find the equal of Scipio 
when he was gone, that general touched the shoul- 
der of his young officer and said, " Possibly here/' 
Rough soldier as he always was, he married Julia, 

of the high family of the Caesars, who were said to 
203 



204 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

be descended from iEneas ; and though he was 
much disliked by the Senate, he always carried the 
people with him. When he received the province 
of Numidia, instead of, as every one had done be- 
fore, forming his i dxmj only of Roman citizens, he 
offered to enlist whoever would, and thus filled his 
ranks with all sorts of wild and desperate men, 
whom he could indeed train to fight, but who had 
none of the old feeling for honor or the state, and 
*this in the end made a great change in Rome. 

Jugairtha maintained a wild war in the deserts of 
Africa with Marius, but at last he was betrayed to 
the Romans by his friend Bocchus, another Moorish 
king, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius' lieuten- 
ant, was sent to receive him — a transaction which 
Sulla commemorated on a signet ringr which he al- 
ways wore. Poor Jugurtha was kept two years to 
appear at the triumph, where he walked in chains, 
and then was thrown alive into the dungeon under 
the Capitol, where he took six days to die of cold 
and hunger. 

Marius was elected consul for the second time 
even before he had quite come home from Africa, 
for it was a time of great clanger. Two fierce and 
terrible tribes, whom the Romans called Cimbri 
and Teutones, and who were but the vanguard of 



The War of Marius. 



205 



the swarms who wx>uld overwhelm them six cen- 
turies later, had come down through Germany to 
the settled countries belonging to Rome, especially 
the lands round the old Greek settlements in Gaul, 
which had fallen of course into the hands of the 
Romans, and were f nil of beautiful rich cities, with 




MARIUS. 

houses and gardens round them. The Province, 
as the Romans called it, would have been grand 
plundering ground for these savages, and Marius 
established himself in a camp on the banks of the 
Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring his 
provisions from the sea, which still remains. While 
he was thus engaged, he was a fourth time elected 
consul. 



206 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant 
to march eastward round the Alps, and pour 
through the Tyrol into Italy ; the Teutones to go 
by the West, fighting Marius on the way. But he 
would not come out of his camp on the Rhone, 
though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to 
ask the Roman soldiers what messages they had to 
send to their wives in Italy. 

When they had all passed, he came out of his 
camp and followed them as far as Aquae Sextiae, 
now called Aix, where one of the most terrible bat- 
tles the world ever saw was fought. These people 
were a whole tribe — wives, children, and every- 
thing they had with them — and to be defeated 
was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure 
was made with their carts and wagons, whence the 
women threw arrows and darts to help the men ; 
and when, after three days of hard fighting, all 
hope was over, they set fire to the enclosure and 
killed their children and themselves. The whole 
swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and 
no one was left to bury the dead, so that the spot 
was called the Putrid Fields, and is still known as 
Les Pourrieres. 

While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings 
came that he was a fifth time chosen consul ; but 




ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AX 
THE CAPITOL AT ROME. 



The Wars of Marius. 209 

he had to hasten into Italy, for the other consul, 
Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and 
Marius met him on the Po retreating from them. 
The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy for themselves 
and their allies the Teutones. " The Teutones 
have all the ground they will ever want, on the 
other side the Alps," said Marius ; and a terrible 
battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as en- 
tirely cut off as their allies had been. 

Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a re- 
ward to the brave soldiers who had fought under 
him, he made one thousand of them, who came 
from the city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and 
this the patricians disliked greatly. His excuse was, 
" The din of arms drowned the voice of the law ; " 
but the new citizens were provided for by lands in 
the Province, which the Romans said the Gauls 
had lost to the Teutones and they had reconquered. 
It was very hard on the Gauls, but that was the 
last thing a Roman cared about. 

The Italians, however, were all crying out foi 
the rights of Romans, and the more far-sighted 
among the Romans would, like Caius Gracchus, 
have granted them. Marcus Livius Drusus did his 
best for them ; he was a good man, wise and frank- 
hearted. When he was having a house built, and 
the plan was shown him which would make it im- 



210 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

possible for any one to see into it, he said, " Rather 
build cue where my fellow-countrymen may see 
all I do." He was very much loved, and when he 
was ill, prayers were offered at the temples for his 
recovery ; but no sooner did he take up the cause 
of the Italians than all the patricians hated him 
bitterly. " Rome for the Romans," was their 
watchword. Drusus was one day entertaining an 
Italian gentleman, when his little nephew, Marcus 
Porcius Cato, a descendant of the old censor, and 
bred in stern patrician views, was playing about 
the room. The Italian merrily asked him to favor 
his cause. " No," said the boy. He was offered 
toys and cakes if he would change his mind, but he 
still refused ; he was threatened, and at last he was 
held by one leg out of the window — all without 
shaking his resolution for a moment ; and this con- 
stancy he carried with him through life. 

People's minds grew embittered, and Drusus 
was murdered in the street, crying as he fell, 
" When will Rome find so good a citizen ! " After 
this, the Italians took up arms, and what was called 
the Social War began. Marius had no high com- 
mand, being probably too much connected with 
the enemy. Some of the Italian tribes held 
with Rome, and these were rewarded with the 
citizenship ; and after all, though the consul Lucius 



The Wars of Marius. 211 

Julius Csesar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained 
some victories, the revolt was so widespread, that 
the Senate- felt it wisest, on the first sign of peace, 
to offer citizenship to such Italians as would come 
within sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought 
a man under Roman law, freed him from taxation, 
and gave him many advantages and openings to a 
rise in life. But he could only give his vote at 
Rome, and only there receive the distribution of 
corn, and he further became liable to be called 
out to serve in a legion, so that the benefit was not 
so great as at first appeared, and no very large 
numbers of Italians came to apply for it. 




* CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE ADVENTURES OF MARIUS. 

93—84. 

THE chief foe of Marius was almost always his 
second in command, Publius Cornelius Sulla, 
one of the men of highest family in Rome. He 
had all the high culture and elegant learning that 
the rough soldier Marius despised, spoke and wrote 
Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well read in 
Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian 
could be ; but he was given up to all the excesses 
of luxury in which the wealthy Romans indulged, 
and his way of life had made him frightful to look 
at. His face was said to be like a mulberry sprink- 
led with salt, with a terrible pair of blue eyes glar- 
ing out of it. 

In 93 he was sent to command against Mithri- 

212 



The Adventures of Marius. 213 

dates, king of Pontus, one of the little kingdoms in 
Asia Minor that had sprung up out of the break-up 
of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithri- 
dates, it had grown very powerful. He was of 
Persian birth, had all the learning and science both 
of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial 
to be wonderfully learned in all plants and their 
virtues, so as to have made himself proof against 
all kinds of poison, and he could speak twenty- 
five languages. 

He had great power in Asia Minor, and took 
upon himself to appoint a king of Cappadocia, thus 
leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In the 
midst of the Social War, when he thought they 
had their hands full in Italy, Mithridates, caused 
all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor to rise upon 
the Romans among them in one night, and murder 
them all, so that 80,000 are said to have perished. 
Sulla was ordered to take the command of the 
army which was to avenge their death ; but, while 
he was raising his forces, Marius, angry that the 
patricians had hindered the plebeians and Italians 
from gaining more by the Social War, raised up a 
great tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' 
resistance. He would have done more wisely had 
he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for that gen- 



214 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

eral came back to the rescue of his friends with 
six newly-raised legions, and Marius could only 
just contrive to escape from Rome, where he was 
proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. 
He was now seventy years old, but full of spirit. 
First he escaped to his own farm, whence he hoped 
to reach Ostia, where a ship w^as waiting for him ; 
but a party of horsemen were seen coming, and 
he was hidden in a cart full of beans and driven 
down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go 
to Africa ; but adverse winds and want of food 
forced him to land at Circaeum, whence, with a few 
friends, he made his way along the coast, through 
woods and rocks, keeping up the spirits of his com- 
panions by telling them that, when a little boy, he 
robbed an eyrie of seven eaglets, and that a sooth- 
sayer had then foretold that he would be seven 
times consul. At last a troop of horse was seen 
coming towards them, and at the same time two 
ships near the coast. The only hope was in swim- 
ming out to the nearest ship, and Marius was so 
heavy and old that this was done with great diffi- 
culty. Even then the ships were so near the shore 
that the pursuers could command the crew to 
throw Marius out, but this they refused to do, 
though they only waited till the soldiers were gone, 



The Adventures of Marius. 



215 



to put him on shore again. Here he was in a 
marshy, boggy place, where an old man let him 
rest in his cottage, and then hid him in a cave 
under a heap of rushes. Again, however, the troops 
appeared, and threatened the old man for hiding an 
enemy of the Romans. It was in Marius' hearing, 




THE CATAPULT, 



and fearing to be betrayed, he rushed out into a pool, 
where he stood up to his neck in water till a soldier 
saw him, and he was dragged out and taken to the 
city of Minturnae. 

There the council decided- on his death, and sent 
a soldier to kill him, but the fierce old man stood 



216 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

glaring at him, and said, " Barest thou kill Cains 
Marius ? " The man was so frightened that he ran 
away, crying out, " I cannot kill Caius Marius." 
The Senate of Minturnse took this as an omen, and 
remembered besides that he had been a good friend 
to the Italians, so they conducted him through a 
sacred grove to the sea, and sent him off to Africa. 
On landing, he sent his son to ask shelter from one 
of the Numidian princes, and, while waiting for an 
answer, he was harassed by a messenger from a 
Roman officer of low rank, forbidding his presence 
in Africa. He made no reply till the messenger 
pressed to know what to say to his master. Then 
the old man looked up, and sternly answered, "Say 
that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in the 
ruins of Carthage " — a grand rebuke for the insult 
co fallen greatness. But the Numidian could not 
receive him, and he could only find shelter in a lit- 
tle island on the coast. 

There he soon heard that no sooner had Sulla 
embarked for the East than Rome had fallen into 
dire confusion. The consuls, Caius Octavius and 
Publius Cornelius China, were of opposite parties, 
and had a furious fight, in which Cinna was driven 
out of Rome, and at the same time the Italians had 
begun a new Social War. Marius saw that his 



The Adventures of Marius. 217 

time was come. He hurried to Etruria, where he 
was joined by a party of his friends and five hun- 
dred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans 
formed another army under Quintus Sertorius, and 
the Samnites, who had begun the war, overpowered 
the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, 



i^SS*" 



ISLAND OK THE COAST. 



declaring they would have no peace till they had 
destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinna and an arm} 7 
were advancing on another side, and, as he was 
really consul, the Senate in their distress admitted 
him, hoping that he would stop the rest ; but when 
he marched in and seated himself again in the chair 
of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in 
rags. 

They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was. 



218 Young Folks' History of Rome 

beginning with the consul, Caius Octavius, who 
had disdained to flee, and whose head was severed 
from his bodj^ and displayed in the Forum, with 
many other senators of the noblest blood in Rome, 
who had offended either Marius or Cinna or any of 
their fierce followers. Marius walked along in 
gloomy silence, answering no one ; but his follow- 
ers were bidden to spare only those to whom he 
gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged 
the houses, murdered many on their own account, 
and everything was in the wildest uproar, till the two 
chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion to restore 
order. 

Then they named themselves consuls, without 
2ven asking for an election, and thus Marius was 
seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the 
East and take the command from Sulla, but his 
health was too much broken, and before the year of 
his consulate was over he died. The last time he 
had left the house, he had said to some friends that 
no man ought to trust again to such a doubtful for- 
tune as his had been ; and then he took to his bed 
for seven days without anj^ known illness, and 
there was found dead, so that he was thought to 
have starved himself to death. 

Cinna put in another consul named Valerius 



The Adventures of Marius. 



219 



Flaccus, and invited all the Italians to enroll them- 
selves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went out 
to the East, meaning to take away the command 
from Sulla, who was hunting Mithridates out of 
Greece, which he had seized and held for a short 
time, But Flaccus' own army rose against him 
and killed him, and Sulla, after beating Mithridates, 
driving him back to Pontus, and making peace 
with him, was now to come home. 




CHAPTER XXV. 

sulla's proscription. 

88—71. 

THERE was great fear at Rome, among the 
friends of Cinna and Marius, at the prospect 
of Sulla's return. A fire broke out in the Capitol, 
and this added to their terror, for the Books of the 
Sybil were burnt, and all her prophecies were lost. 
Cinna tried to oppose Sulla's landing, but was 
killed by his own soldiers at Brundusium. 

Sulla, with his victorious army, could not be 
stopped. Sertorius fled to Spain, but Marius' son 
tried, with the help of the Samnites, to resist, and 
held out Prseneste, but the Samnites were beaten 
in a terrible battle outside the walls, and when the 
people of the city saw the heads of the leaders car- 
ried on spear points, they insisted on giving up. 
220 



Sulla's Proscription. 22l 

Young Marius and a Samnite noble hid their*»elves 
in a cave, and as they had no hope, resolved to die ; 
so they fought, hoping to kill each other, and when 
Marius was left alive, he caused himself to be slain 
by a slave. 

Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the 
resistance he met with, and determined on a terri- 
ble vengeance. He could not enter the city till he 
was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, 
so the Senate came out to meet him in the temple 
of Bellona. As they took their seats, they heard 
dreadful shrieks and cries. " No matter," said 
Sulla; "it is only some wretches being punished." 
The wretches were the 8000 Samnite prisoners he 
had taken at the battle of Prseneste, and brought 
to be killed in the Campus Martius ; and with 
these shocking sounds to mark that he was in earn- 
est,- the purple-faced general told the trembling 
Senate that if they submitted to him he would be 
good to them, but that he would spare none of his 
enemies, great or small. 

And his men were already t in the city and coun- 
try, slaughtering not only the party of Marius, but 
every one against whom any one of them had a 
spite, or whose property he coveted. Marius' 
body, which had been buried and not burnt, was 



222 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

taken from the grave and thrown into the Tiber ; 
and such horrible deeds were done that Sulla was 
asked in the Senate where the execution was to 
stop. He showed a list of eighty more who had 
yet to die ; and the next day and the next he 
brought other lists of two hundred and thirty each. 
These dreadful lists were called proscriptions, and 
any one who tried to shelter the victims was treated 
in the same manner. The property of all who were 
slain was seized, and their children declared incap- 
able of holding any public office. 

Among those who were in danger was the nephew 
of Marius' wife, Caius Julius Caesar, but, as he was 
of a high patrician family, Sulla only required of 
him to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter 
of his own. Csesar refused, and fled to the Sabine 
hills, where pursuers were sent after him ; but his 
life was begged for by his friends at Rome, espe- 
cially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his 
life, saying, however, " Beware ; in that young 
trifler is more than one Marius." Caesar went to 
join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke 
off the idle life of pleasure he had been leading in 
Rome. 

The country people were even more cruelly pun- 
ished than the citizens ; whole cities were destroyed 



Sulla? s Proscription. 



225 



and districts laid waste ; the whole of Etruria was 
ravaged, the old race entirely swept away, and the 
towns ruined beyond revival, while the new city of 
Florence was built with their remains, and all we 
know of them is from the tombs which have of late 
years been opened. 

Both the consuls had perished, and Sulla caused 




CORNELIUS SULLA. 



himself to be named Dictator. He had really a 
purpose in all the horrors he had perpetrated, 
namely, to clear the way for restoring the old gov- 
ernment at Rome, which Marius and his Italians 
had been overthrowing. He did not see that the 
rule which had worked tolerably well while Rome 



226 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

was only a little city with a small country round 
it, would not serve when it was the head of numer- 
ous distant countries, where the governors, like 
himself and Marius, grew rich, and trained armies 
under them able to overpower the whole state at 
home. So he set to work to put matters as much 
as possible in the old order. So many of the Senate 
had been killed, that he had to make up the num- 
bers by putting in three hundred knights ; and, to 
supply the lack of other citizens, after the hosts 
who had perished, he allowed the Italians to go on 
coming in to be enrolled as citizens ; and ten thou- 
sand slaves, who had belonged to his victims, were 
not only set free, but made citizens as his own 
clients, thus taking the name of Cornelius. He 
also much lessened the power of the tribunes of the 
people, and made a law that when a man had once 
been a tribune he should never be chosen for any 
of the higher offices of the state. By these means 
he sought to keep up the old patrician power, on 
which he believed the greatness of Rome depended ; 
though, after all, the grand old patrician families 
had mostly died off, and half the Senate were only 
knights made noble. 

After this Sulla resigned the dictatorship, for he 
was growing old, and had worn out his health by 



Sulla's Proscription. 227 

his riot and luxury. He spent his time in a villa 
near Rome, talking philosophy with his friends, and 
dictating the history of his own life in Greek. 
When he died, he bade them burn his body, con- 
trary to the practice of the Cornelii, no doubt fear- 
ing it would be treated like that of Marius. 

The most promising of the men of his party who 
were growing up and coming forward was Cnaeus 
Pompeius, a brave and worthy man, who had while 
quite young, gained such a victory over a Numid- 
ian prince that Sulla himself gave him the title of 
Magnus, or the Great. He was afterwards sent to 
Spain, where Sertorius held out for eight years 
against the Roman power with the help of the na- 
tive chiefs, but at last was put to death by his own 
followers. Things were altogether in a bad state. 
There were great struggles in Rome at every elec- 
tion, for the officers of the state were now chiefly 
esteemed for the sake of the three or five years' 
government in the provinces to which they led. 
. No expense was thought too great in shows of 
beasts and gladiators by which to win the votes of 
the people ; for, after the year of office, the can- 
didate meant amply to repay himself by what he 
could squeeze out of the unhappy province under 



228 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

his charge, and nobody cared for cruelty or injustice 
to any one but a Roman citizen. 

Numbers of gladiators were kept and trained to 
fight in these shows ; and while the Spanish war 
was going on, a whole school of them — seventy- 
eight in number — who were kept at Capua, broke 
out, armed themselves with the spits, hooks, and 
axes in a butcher's shop, and took refuge in the 
crater of Mount Vesuvius, which at that time 
showed no signs of being an active volcano. There, 
under their leader Spartacus, they gathered together 
every gladiator slave or who could run away to them, 
and Spartacus wanted them to march northward, 
force their way through Italy, climb the Alps, and 
reach their homes in Thrace and Gaul ; but the 
plunder of Italy tempted them, and they would not 
go, till an army was sent against them under Mar- 
cus Licinius Crassus — called Dives, or the Rich, 
from the spoil he had gained during the proscrip- 
tion. Then Spartacus hoped to escape in a fleet of 
pirate ships from Cilicia, and to hold out in the 
passes of Mount Taurus ; but the Cilician pirates 
deceived him, sailed away with his money, and left 
him to his fate, and he and his gladiators were all 
slain by Crassus and Pompeius, who had been called 
home from Spain. 



CHAPTER XXVI, 

THE CAREER OF POMPEIUS. 

70—63. 

CNJEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS and Lucius 
Licinius Crassus Dives were consuls together 
in the year 70 ; but Crassus, though he feasted the 
people at 10,000 tables, was envied and disliked, 
and would never have been elected but for Pom- 
peius, who was a great favorite with the people, 
and so much trusted, both by them and the nobles, 
that it seems to have filled him with pride, for he 
gave himself great airs, and did not treat his fellow- 
consul as an equal. 

When his term of office was over, the most press- 
ing thing to be done was to put down the Cilician 
pirates. In the angle formed between Asia Minor 

and Syria, with plenty of harbors formed by the 

229 



230 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

spurs of Mount Taurus, there had dwelt for ages 
past a horde of sea robbers, whose swift galleys 
darted on the merchant ships of Tyre and Alexan- 
dria ; and now, after the ruin of the Syrian king- 
dom, they had grown so rich that their state galleys 
had silken sails, oars inlaid with ivory and silver, 
and bronze prows. They robbed the old Greek 
temples and the Eastern shrines, and even made 
descents on the Italian cities, besides stopping the 
ships which brought wheat from Sicity and Alex- 
andria to feed the Romans. 

To enable Pompeius to crush them, authority 
was given him for three years over all the Medi- 
terranean and fifty miles inland all round, which 
was nearly the same thing as the whole empire. 
He divided the sea into thirteen commands, and 
sent a party to fight the pirates in each ; and this 
was done so effectually, that in forty days they 
were all hunted out of the west end of the gulf, 
whither he pursued them with his whole force, beat 
them in a sea-fight, and then besieged them : but, 
as he was known to be a just and merciful man, 
they came to terms with him, and he scattered 
them about in small colonies in distant cities, so 
that they might cease to be mischievous. 

In the meantime, the war with Mithridates had 



The Career of Pompeius. 233 

broken out again, and Lucius Lucullus, who had 
been consul after Pompeius, was fighting with him 
in the East ; but Lucullus did not please the Ro- 
mans, though he met with good success, and had 
pushed Mithridates so hard that there was nothing 
left for Pompeius but to complete the conquest, 
and he drove the old king beyond Caucasus, and 
then marched into Syria, where he overthrew the 
last of the Seleucian kings, Antiochus, and gave 
him the little kingdom of Commagene to spend the 
remainder of his life in, while Syria and Phoenicia 
were made into a great Roman province. 

Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled 
into being independent of Syria, but only by the 
help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to ally 
themselves with small states in order to make an 
excuse for making war on large ones. There was 
now a great quarrel between two brothers of the 
Maccabean family, and one of them, Hyrcanus, 
came to ask the aid of Pompeius. The Roman 
army marched into the Holy Land, and, after seiz- 
ing the whole country, was three months besieging 
Jerusalem, which, after all, it only took by an at- 
tack when the Jews were resting on the Sabbath 
day. Pompeius insisted on forcing his way into 
the Holy of Holies, and was very much disappoint- 



234 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

ed to find it empty and dark. He did not plunder 
the treasury of the Temple, but the Jews remarked 
that, from the time of this daring entrance, his pros- 
perity seemed to fail him. Before he left the East, 
however, old Mithridates, who had taken refuge in 
the Crimea, had been attacked by his own favorite 
son, and, finding that his power was gone, had 
taken poison ; but, as his constitution was so forti- 
fied by antidotes that it took no effect, he caused 
one of his slaves to kill him. 

The son submitted to the Romans, and was al- 
lowed to reign on the Bosphorus ; but Pompeius 
had extended the Roman Empire as far as the 
Euphrates ; for though a few small kings still re- 
mained, it was only by suffrance from the Romans, 
who had gained thirty-nine great cities. Egypt, 
the Parthian kingdom on the Tigris, and Armenia 
In the mountains, alone remained free. 

While all this was going on in the East, there 
was a very dangerous plot contrived at Rome by 
a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven 
other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, 
even the slaves and gladiators, overthrowing the 
government, seizing all the offices of state, and 
murdering all their opponents, after the example 
first set by Marius and Cinna. 



o 
d 

3 



o 

H 




The Career of Pompeius. 237 

Happily such secrets are seldom kept ; one of the 
plotters told the woman he was in love with, and 
she told one of the consuls, Marcus Tullius Cicero. 
Cicero was one of the wisest and best men in Rome, 
and the one whom we really know the best, for he 
left a great number of letters to his friends, which 
show us the real mind of the man. He was of the 
order of the knights, and had been bred up to be a 
lawyer and orator, and his speeches came to be the 
great models of Roman eloquence. He was a man 
of real conscience, and he most deeply loved Rome 
and her honor ; and though he was both vain and 
timid, he could put these weaknesses aside for the 
public good. Before all the Senate he impeached 
Catilina, showing how fully he knew all that he in- 
tended. Nothing could be done to him by law till 
he had actually committed his crime, and Cicero 
wanted to show him that all was known, so as to 
cause him to flee and join his friends outside. 
Catilina tried to face it out, but all the senators 
began to cry out against him, and he dashed awaj~ 
in terror, and left the city at night. Cicero aiiv 
nounced it the next day in a famous speech, be- 
ginning, " He is gone ; he has rushed away ; he 
has burst forth." Some of his followers in guilt 
were left at Rome, and just then some letters were 



238 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



brought to Cicero by some of a tribe of Gauls 
whom they had invited to help them in the ruin of 
the Senate. This was positive proof, and Cicero 
caused the nine worst to be seized, and, having 
proved their guilt, there was a consultation in the 
Senate as to their fate. Julius Caesar wanted to 

keep them prisoners for 
life, which he said was 
worse than death, as that, 
he believed, would end 
everything ; but all the 
rest of the Senate were 
for their death, and they 
were all strangled, with- 
out giving them a chance 
of defending themselves 
or appealing to the peo- 
ple. Cicero beheld the 

CICERO. J - 

execution himself, and 
then went forth to the crowd, merely saying, " They 
have lived." 

Catilina, meantime, had collected 20,000 men in 
Italy, but they were not half-armed, and the newly- 
returned proconsul, Metellus, made head, against 
him ; while the other consul, Caius Antonius, was 
recalled from Macedonia with his army. As he 





COLOSSAL STATUE OF POMPEIUS OF THE 
PALAZZO SPADA AT ROME. 



The Career of Pompeius. 



241 



was a friend of Catilina, he did not choose to fight 
with him, and gave up the command to his lieu- 
tenant, by whom the wretch was defeated and slain. 
His head was cut off and sent to Home, 



wiiik^ 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

POMPEIUS AND C^SAR. 

61—48. 

POMPEIUS was coming home for his triumph, 
every one had hopes from him, for things 
were in a very bad state. There had been a great 
disturbance at Julius Caesar's house. Every year 
there was a festival in honor of Cybele, the Bona 
Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women 
were admitted, and where it was sacrilege for a 
man to be seen. In the midst of this feast in 
Caesar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aurelia 
that there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia 
shut the doors, took a torch and ran through the 
house, looking in every one's face for the offender, 
who was found to be Publius Clodius, a worthless 

young man, who had been in Catilina's conspiracy, 

242 



Pompeius and Ccesar. 



243 



but had given evidence against him. He escaped, 
but was brought to trial, and then borrowed 
money enough of Crassus the rich, to bribe the 
judges and avoid the punishment he deserved. 




POMPEIUS. 



Caesar's wife, the sister of Pompeius was free of 
blame in the matter, but he divorced her, saying 
that Caesar's wife must be free from all suspicion ; 
and this, of course, did not bring her brother 
home in a friendly spirit to Caesar. 



244 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Pompeius' triumph was the most magnificent 
that had ever yet been seen. It lasted two days, 
and the banners that were carried in the proces- 
sion, bore the names of nine hundred cities and 
one thousand fortresses which he had conquered. 
All the treasures of Mithridates — • statues, jewels, 
and splendid ornaments of gold and silver worked 
with precious stones — -were carried along ; and it 
was reckoned that he had brought home 20,000 
talents — equal to c£5,000,000 — for the treasury. 
He was admired, too, for refusing any surname 
taken from his conquests, and only wearing the 
laurel wreath of a victor in the Senate. 

Pompeius and Caesar were the great rival names 
at this time. Pompeius' desire was to keep the 
old framework, and play the part of Sulla as its 
protector, only without its violence and bloodshed. 
Caesar saw that it was impossible that things 
should go on as they were, and had made up his 
mind to take the lead and mould them afresh ; 
but this he could not do while Pompeius was 
looked up to as the last great conqueror. So 
Caesar meant to serve his consulate, take some 
government where he could grow famous and form 
an army, and then come home and mould every- 
thing anew. After a year's service in Spain as 



Pompeius and Ccesar. 245 

propraetor, Caesar came back and made friends 
with Pompeius and Crassus, giving his daughter 
Julia in marriage to Pompeius, and forming what 
was called a triumvirate, or union of three men. 
Thus he easily obtained the consulship, and showed 
himself the friend of the people by bringing in an 
Agrarian Law for dividing the public lands in 
Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgetting 
Pompeius' old soldiers ; also taking other measures 
which might make the Senate recollect that Sulla 
had foretold that he would be another Marius and 
more. 

After this.} he took Gaul as his province, and 
spent seven years in subduing it bit by bit, and in 
making two visits to Britain. He might pretty 
well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for 
his interference when he came back. Clodius had 
actually dared to bring Cicero to a trial for having 
put to death the friends of Catilina without allow- 
ing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius 
would not help him, and the people banished him 
four hundred miles from Rome, when he went to 
Sicily, where he was very miserable ; but his exile 
only lasted two years, and then better counsels 
prevailed, and he was brought home by a general 



246 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a 
triumph. 

Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and tru^ a 
man as Cicero, but very rough and stern, so that 
he was feared and hated ; and there were often 
fierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one 




AMPHITHEATRE. 



of these Pompeius' robe was sprinkled with blood. 
On his return home, his young wife Julia thought 
he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an 
illness of which she died ; thus breaking the link 
between her husband and father. 

Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans 







THE ARENA. 



Pompeius and Ccesar. 249 

when he was consul together with Crassus. He 
had been for some time building a most splendid 
theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek 
fashion, open to the sky, and with tiers of galleries 
circling round an arena ; but the Greeks had never 
used their theatres for the savage sports for which 
this was intended. When it was opened, five hun- 
dred lions, eighteen elephants, and a multitude of 
gladiators were provided to fight in different fash- 
ions with one another before thirty thousand spec- 
tators, the whole being crowned by a temple to 
Conquering Venus. After his consulate, Pompeius 
took Spain as his province, but did not go there, 
managing it by deputy ; while Crassus had Syria, 
and there went to war with the wild Parthians on 
the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrhse, the 
army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; 
he was killed, his head was cut off, and his mouth 
filled up with molten gold in scorn of his riches. At 
Rome, there was such distress that no one thought 
much even of such a disaster. Bribes were given to 
secure elections, and there was nothing but tumult 
and uproar, in which good men like Cicero and 
Cato could do nothing. Clodius was killed in one 
of these frays, and the mob grew so furious that 
the Senate chose Pompeius to be sole consul to put 



250 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

them down ; and this he did for a short time, but 
all fell into confusion again while he was very ill of 
a fever at Naples, and even when he recovered 
there was a feeling that Caesar was wanted. But 
Caesar's friends said he must not be called upon to 
give up his army unless Pompeius gave up his 
command of the army in Spain, and neither of them 
would resign. 

Caesar advanced with all his forces as far as Ra- 
venna, which was still part of Cisalpine Gaul, and 
then the consul, Marcus Marcellus, begged Pom- 
peius to protect the commonwealth, and he took 
up arms. Two of Caesars great friends, Marcus 
Antonius and Caius Cassius, who were tribunes, 
forbade this ; and wdien they were not heeded, they 
fled to Caesar's camp asking his protection. 

So he advanced. It was not lawful for an im- 
perator, or general in command of an army, to come 
within the Roman territory with his troops except 
for his triumph, and the littl e river Rubicon was 
the boundary of Cisalpine Gaul. So when Caesar 
crossed it, he took the first step in breaking through 
old Roman rules, and thus the saying arose that 
one has passed the Rubicon when one has gone so 
far in a matter that there is no turning back. 
Though Caesar's army was but small, his fame was 



Pornpeius and Ccesar. 251 

such that everybody seemed struck with dismay, 
even Pornpeius himself, and instead of fighting, he 
carried off all the senators of his party to the South, 
even to the extreme point of Italy at Brundusium. 
Caesar marched after them thither, having met 
with no resistance, and having, indeed, won all 
Italy in sixty days. As he advanced on Brundu- 
sium, Pornpeius embarked on board a ship in the 
harbor and sailed away, meaning, no doubt, to 
raise an army in the provinces and return — some 
feared like Sulla — to take vengeance. 

Csesar was appointed Dictator, and after crush- 
ing Pornpeius' friends in Spain, he pursued him 
into Macedonia, where Pornpeius had been collect- 
ing all the friends of the old commonwealth. There 
was a great battle fought at Pharsalia, a battle 
which nearly put an end to the old government of 
Rome, for Csesar gained a great victory ; and Porn- 
peius fled to the coast, where he found a vessel and 
sailed for Egypt. He sent a message to ask shelter 
at Alexandria, and the advisers of the young king 
pretended to welcome him, but they really intended 
to make friends with the victor ; and as Pornpeius 
stepped ashore he was stabbed in the back, his body 
thrown into the surf, and his head cut off. 



CHAPTER XXVIIL 

JULIUS CLESAR. 

48—44. 

WITH Pompeius fell the hopes of those who 
were faithful to the old government, such 
as Cicero and Cato. They had only to wait and see 
what Caesar would do, and with the memory of 
Marius in their minds. 

Caesar did not come at once to Rome ; he had 
first to reduce the East to obedience. Egypt was 
under the last descendants of Alexander's general 
Ptolemy, and was an ally of Rome, that is, only re- 
maining a kingdom by her permission. The king" 
was a wretched weak lad ; his sister Cleopatra, 
who was joined with him in the throne, was pne of 
the most beautiful and winning women who ever 

lived. Caesar, who needed money, demanded some 
252 



Julius Ccesar* 



253 



that was owing to the state. The young king's 
advisers refused, and Caesar, who had but a small 
force with him, was shut up in a quarter of Alex- 
andria where he could get no fresh water but from 
pits which his men dug in the sand. He burnt the 
Egyptian fleet that it might not stop the succors 
that were coming from 
Syria, and he tried to take 
the Isle of Pharos, with 
the lighthouse on it, but 
his ship was sunk, and he 
was obliged to save him- 
self by swimming, hold- 
ing his journals in one 
hand above the water. 
However, the forces from 
Syria were soon brought 
to him, and he was able to 
fight a battle in which the 
young king was drowned ; 
and Egypt was at his 
mercy. Cleopatra was de- 
termined to have an interview with him, and had 
herself carried into his rooms in a roll of carpet, 
and when there, she charmed him so much that he 
set her up as queen of Egypt. He remained three 




JULIUS CJB&AiU 



254 



Young FolW History of Rome. 



months longer in Egypt collecting money ; and 
hearing that Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, 
had attacked the Roman settlements in Asia Minor, 
he sailed for Tarsus, marched against Pharnaces, 
routed and killed him in battle. The success was 
announced to the Senate in the following brief 




OATO. 



words, "Veni, vidi, vici" — "I came, I saw, I con- 
quered." 

He was a second time appointed Dictator, and 
came home to arrange affairs ; but there were no 
proscriptions, though he took away the estates of 
those who opposed him. There was still a party 




Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium (lit. Pigeon-house) of the' House of Jul? ' 

C/ESAR AT THE PORTA CAPENA IN ROME. 

tThe rows of niches for the cinerary urns in a Roman sepulchre were called by this 
name from their resemblance to a dovecot.) 



Julius Ccesar. 257 

of the senators and their supporters who had fol- 
lowed Pompeius in Africa, with Cato and Cnaeus 
Pompeius, the eldest son of the great leader, and 
Caesar had to follow them thither. He gave them a 
great defeat at Thapsus, and the remnant took refuge 
in the city of Utica, whither Caesar followed them. 
They would have stood a siege, but the towns- 
people would not consent, and Cato sent off all his 
party by sea, and remained alone with his son and 
a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but 
to die by his own sword ere he came, as the Ro- 
mans had learned from Stoic philosophy to think 
the nobler part. 

Such of the Senate as had not joined Pompeius 
were ready to fall down and worship Caesar when 
he came home. So rejoiced was Rome to fear no 
proscription, that temples were dedicated to Caesar's 
clemency, and his image was to be carried in pro- 
cession with those of the gods. He was named 
Dictator for ten years, and was received with four 
triumphs — over the Gauls, over the Egyptians, 
over Pharnaces, and over Juba, an African king 
who had aided Cato. Foremost of the Gaulish 
prisoners was the brave Vercingetorix, and among 
the Egyptians, Arsinoe, the sister of Cleopatra. 
A banquet was given at his cost to the whole 



258 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Roman people, and the shows of gladiators and 
beasts surpassed all that had ever been seen. The 
Julii were said to be descended from iEneas and 
to Venus, as his ancestress, Csesar dedicated a 
breastplate of pearls from the river mussels of Bri- 
tain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to re- 
duce the sons of Pompeius. They were defeated 
in battle, the elder was killed, but Cnaeus, the 
younger, held out in the mountains and hid himself 
among the natives. 

After this, Csesar returned to Rome to carry out 
his plans. He was dictator for ten years and con- 
sul for five, and was also imperator or commander 
of an army he was not made to disband, so that he 
nearly was as powerful as any king ; and, as he 
saw that such an enormous domain as Rome now 
possessed could never be governed by two magis- 
trates changing every year, he prepared matters 
for there being one ruler. The influence of the 
Senate, too, he weakened very much by naming a 
great many persons to it of no rank or distinction, 
till there were nine hundred members, and nobody 
thought much of being a senator. He also made 
an immense number of new citizens, and he caused 
a great survey to be begun by Roman officers in 
preparation for properly arranging the provinces, 



Julius Ocesar. 259 

governments, and tribute ; and he began to have 
the laws drawn np in regular order. In feet, he 
was one of the greatest men the world has ever 
produced, not only as a conqueror, but a statesman 
and ruler ; and though his power over Rome was 
not according to the laws, and had been gained by 
a rebellion, he was using it for her good. 

He was learned in all philosophy and science, and 
his history of his wars in Gaul has come down to 
our times. As a high patrician by birth, he was 
Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, and thus had to 
fix all the festival days in each year. Now the 
year had been supposed to be only three hundred 
and fifty-five days long, and the Pontifex put in 
another month or several days whenever he pleased, 
so that there was great confusion, and the feast 
days for the harvest and vintage came, according 
to the calendar, three months before there was any 
corn or grapes. 

To set this to rights, since it was now understood 
that the length of the year was three hundred and 
sixty-five days and six hours, Caesar and the scien- 
tific men who assisted him devised the fresh ar- 
rangement that we call leap year, adding a day to 
the three hundred and sixty-five once in four years. 
He also changed the name of one of the summer 



260 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

months from Sextile to July, in honor of himself. 
Another work of his was restoring Corinth and 
Carthage, which had both been ruined the same 
year, and now were both refounded the same 
year. 

He was busy about the glory of the state, but 
there was much to shock old Roman feelings in his 
conduct. Cleopatra had followed him to Rome, 
and he was thinking of putting away his wife Cal- 
phurnia to marry her. But his keeping the dictator- 
ship was the real grievance, and the remains of the 
old party in the Senate could not bear that the pa- 
trician freedom of Rome should be lost. Every 
now and then his flatterers offered him a royal 
crown and hailed him as king, though he always 
refused it, and this title still stirred up bitter 
hatred. He was preparing an army, intending to 
march into the further East, avenge Crassus' de- 
feat on the Parthians, and march where no one but 
Alexander had made his way ; and if he came back 
victorious from thence, nothing would be able to 
stand against him. 

The plotters then resolved to strike before he 
set out. . Caius Cassius, a tall, lean man, who had 
lately been made praetor, was the chief conspirator, 



Julius Ccesar. 261 

and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a de- 
scendant of him who overthrew the Tar quins, and 
husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, also another 
Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of Caesar, 
and newly appointed to the government of Cisal- 
pine Gaul. These and twelve more agreed to mur- 
der Caesar on the 15th of March, called in the 
Roman calendar the Ides of March, when he went 
to the senate-house. 

Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him 
about that special day. His wife dreamt so terrible 
a dream that he had almost yielded to her entreat- 
ies to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in 
and laughed him out of it. As he was carried to the 
senate-house in a litter, a man gave him a writing 
and begged him to read it instantly ; but he kept 
it rolled in his hand without looking. As he went 
up the steps he said to the augur Spurius, "The 
Ides of March are come." " Yes, Caesar," was the 
answer; "but they are not passed." A few steps 
further on, one of the conspirators met him with a 
petition, and the others joined in it, clinging to his 
robe and his neck, till another caught his toga and 
pulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was 
struck with a dagger. Caesar struggled at first as 
all fifteen tried to strike at him, but, when he saw the 



262 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus, he 
exclaimed, "Et tu Brute ,5 — " Thou, too, Brutus " 
— drew his toga over his head, and fell dead at the 
foot of the statue of Pompeius. 




CHAPTER XXIXo 

THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE. 

44—33. 

THE murderers of Caesar had expected the 
Romans to hail them as deliverers from a 
tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who 
was, together with him, consul for that year, made a 
speech over his body as it lay on a couch of gold 
and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral. 
Antonius read aloud Caesar's will, and showed what 
benefits he had intended for his fellow-citizens, and 
how he loved them, so that love for him and wrath 
against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, 
of course, were furious against the murderers ; the 
Senate was terrified, and granted everything An- 
tonius chose to ask, provided he would protect 
them, whereupon lie begged for a guard for himself 
263 



264 Young- Folks' History of Home* 

that lie might be sayed from Caesar's fate, and this 
they gave him ; while the fifteen murderers fled 
secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of which Deci- 
mus Brutus was governor. 

Csesar had no child but the Julia who had been 
wife to Pompeius, and his heir was his young 
cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to 
Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, and, coming to 
Rome, demanded his inheritance, 'which Antonius 
had seized, declaring that it was public money; 
but Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so 
much prudence and fairness that many of the Sen- 
ate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, 
who had always been known as a bad, untrust- 
worthy man ; but the first thing to be done was to 
put down the murderers — Decimus Brutus was in 
Gaul, Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, 
and Sextus Pompeius had also raised an army in 
Spain. 

Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so 
much as Antonius, and put their hope in young 
Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches 
against Antonius, which are called Philippics, be- 
cause they denounce him as Demosthenes used to 
denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, 
they were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking 



The Second Triumvirate. 



265 



state ; and Cicero, in those days, was the foremost 
and best man who was trying at his own risk to 
save the old institutions of his country. But it 
was all in vain ; they were too rotten to last, and 
there were not enough of honest men to make a 
stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like 
Antonius, above all now 
that the clever young 
Octavianus saw it was 
for his interest to make 
common cause with him, 
and with a third friend 
of Cgesar, rich but dull, 
named Marcus ^Emilius 
Lepidus. They called on 
Decimus Brutus to sur- 
render his forces to them, 
and marched against him, 
Then his troops deserted 
him, and he tried to es- 
cape into the Alps, but was delivered up to Anto- 
irius and put to death. 

Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus 
all met on a little island in the river Ehenus and 
agreed to form a triumvirate for five years for set- 
ting things to rights once more, all three enjoying 




MARCUS ANTONIUS. 



266 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

consular power together; and, as they had the 
command of all the armies, there was no one to 
stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern 
Rome, while the other two hunted down the mur~ 
derers of Caesar in the East. But first, there was 
a deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon 
all who could be supposed to have favored the 
murder of Caesar, or who could be enemies to 
their schemes. So these three sat down with a 
list of the citizens before them to make a proscrip- 
tion, each letting a kinsman or friend of his own 
be marked for death, provided he might slay one 
related to another of the three. The dreadful list 
was set up in the Forum, and a price paid for the 
heads of the people in it, so that soldiers, ruffians, 
and slaves brought them in ; but it does not seem 
that — as in the other two proscriptions — there 
was random murder, and many bribed their assas- 
sins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus hao 
marked the fewest and tried to save Cicero, bu^" 
Antonius insisted on his death. On hearing that 
he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with 
his brother, and slowly travelled towards the coast 
from one country house to another till he came to 
Antium, whence he meant to sail for Greece ; but 
there he was overtaken. His brother was killed at 



The Second Triumvirate. 267 

once, but he was put into a boat by his slaves, and 
went down the coast to Formiae, where he landed 
again, and, going to a house near, said he would 
rather die in his own country which he had so 
often saved. However, when the pursuers knocked 
at the gate, his slaves placed him in a litter and 
hurried him out at another door. He was, how- 
ever, again overtaken, and he forbade his slaves to 
fight for him, but stretched out his throat for the 
sword, with his eyes full upon it. His head was 
carried to Antonius, whose wife Fulvia actually 
pierced the tongue with her bodkin in revenge 
for the speeches it had made against her husband. 

After this dreadful work, Antonius and Octavi- 
anus went across to Greece, where Marcus Brutus 
had collected the remains of the army that had 
fought under Pompeius. He had been made much 
of at Athens, where his statue had been set up be- 
side that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the slay- 
ers of Pisistratus. Cassius had jplundered Asia 
Minor, and the two met at Sardis. It is said that 
the night before they were to pass into Macedonia, 
Brutus was sitting alone in his tent, wiien he saw 
the figure of a man before him. " Who art 
thou?" he asked, and the answer was, "I am 



288 Young Folks' History of Borne. 

thine evil genius, Brutus ; I will meet thee again 
at Philippi.' 9 

And it was at Philippi that Brutus and Cassius 
found themselves face to face with Antonius and 
Octavianus. Each army was divided into two, 
and Brutus, who fought against Octavianus, put 




MARCUS BRUTUS. 



his army to flight, but Cassius was driven back by 
Antonius; and seeing a troop of horsemen coming 
towards him, he thought all was lost, and threw 
himself upon a sword. Brutus gathered the 
troops together, and after twenty days renewed 
the fight, when he was routed, fled, and hid him- 



The Second Triumvirate, 2G9 

self, but after some hours put himself to death, as 
did his wife Porcia when she heard of his end. 

After this, Octavianus went back to Italj r , while 
Antonius stayed to pacify the East. When he 
was at Tarsus, the lovely queen of Egypt came, 
resolved to win him over. She sailed up the Cyd- 
nus in a beautiful galley, carved, gilded, and in- 
laid with ivory, with sails of purple silk and sil- 
vered oars, moving to the sound of flutes, while 
she lay on the deck under a star-spangled canopy 
arrayed as Venus, with her ladies as nymphs, and 
little boys as Cupids fanning her. Antonius was 
perfectly fascinated, and she took him back to 
Alexandria with her, heeding nothing but her and 
the delights with which she entertained him, 
though his wife Fulvia and his brother were strug- 
gling to keep up his power at Rome. He did 
come home, but only to make a fresh agreement 
with Octavianus, by which Fulvia was given up 
and he married Octavia, the widow of Marcellus 
and sister of Octavianus, But he could not bear 
to stay long away from Cleopatra, and, deserting 
Octavia, he returned to Egypt, where the most 
wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are told 
of eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each 
being begun a little later than the last, that one 



270 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

might be in perfection when Antonius should call 
for his dinner, Cleopatra yowed once that she 
would drink the most costly of draughts, and, tak- 
ing off an earring of inestimable price, dissolved it 
in vinegar and swallowed it. 

In the meantime, Octavianus and Lepidus to- 
gether had put down Decimus, and Lepidus had 




ALEXANDRIA. 

then tried to overcome Octavianus, but was him- 
self conquered and banished ; for Octavianus, was 
a kindly man, who never shed blood if he could 
help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won 
every one's heart by his gracious ways, while An- 
tonius' riots in Egypt were a scandal to all who 
loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Ro- 
man fallen that he even promised Cleopatra to 



The Second Triumvirate. 271 

conquer Italy and make Alexandria the capital of 
the world. Octavia tried to win him back, but 
she was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and 
coarse, dissipated Antonius did not care for her 
compared with the enticing Egyptian queen. It 
was needful at last for Octavianus to destroy this 
dangerous power, and' he mustered a fleet and 
army, while Antonius and Cleopatra sailed out of 
Alexandria with their ships and gave battle off the 
Cape of Actium. In the midst, either fright or 
treachery made Cleopatra sail away, and all the 
Egyptian ships with her, so that Antonius turned 
at once and fled with her. They tried to raise the 
East in their favor, but all their allies deserted 
them, and their soldiers went over to Alexandria, 
where Octavianus followed them. Then Cleopatra 
betrayed her lover, and put into the hands of Oc- 
tavianus the ships in which he might have fled. 
He killed himself, and Cleopatra surrendered, hop- 
ing to charm young Octavianus as she had done 
Julius and Antonius, but when she saw him grave 
and unmoved, and found he meant to exhibit her 
in his triumph, she went to the tomb of Antonius 
and crowned it with flowers. The next day she 
was found on her couch, in her royal robes, dead, 
and her two maids dying too. "Is this well?" 



272 Young Folks' History of Home. 

asked the man who found her. " It is well for the 
daughter of kings," said her maid with her last 
breath. Cleopatra had long made experiments on 
easy ways of death, and it was believed that an 
asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the 
means of her death. 




CAIUS OCTAVICS. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



CAESAR AUGUSTUS. 



B.C. 33— A. D. 14. 



THE death of Antonius ended the fierce strug- 
gles which had torn Rome so long. Octavi- 
anus was left alone ; all the men who had striven 
for the old government were dead, and those who 
were left were worn out and only longed for rest. 
They had found that he was kind and friendly, 
and trusted to him thankfully, nay, were ready to 
treat him as a kind of god. The old frame of 
constitution went on as usual ; there was still a 
Senate, still consuls, and all the other magistrates, 
but Caesar Octavianus had the power belonging to 
each gathered in one. He was prince of the Sen- 
ate, which gave him rule in the city; prsetor, 
which made him judge, and gave him a special 
273 



274 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

guard of soldiers called the Praetorian Guard to 
execute justice ; and tribune of the people, which 
made him their voice ; and even after his triumph 
he was still imperator, or general of the army. 
This word becomes in English, emperor, but it 
meant at this time merely commander-in-chief. 
He was also Pontifex Maxim us, as Julius Caesar 
had been ; and there was a general feeling that he 
was something sacred and set apart as the ruler 
and peace-maker ; and, as he shared this feeling 
himself, he took the name of Augustus, which is 
the one by w^hich he is always known. 

He did not, however, take to himself any great 
show or state. He lived in his family abode, and 
dressed and walked about the streets like any 
other Roman gentleman of consular rank, and no 
special respect was paid to him in speech, for, 
warned by the fate of Julius, he was determined 
to prevent the Romans from being put in mind of 
kings and crowns. He was a wise and deep-think- 
ing man, and he tried to carry out the plans of 
Julius for the benefit of the nation and of the 
whole Roman world. He had the survey finished 
of all the countries of the empire, which now 
formed a complete border round the Mediterranean 
Sea, reaching as far north as the British Channel, 




STATUE OF AUGUSTUS AS TH73 VATICAN. 



Ccesar Augustus. 277 

the Alps, and the Black Sea ; as far south as the 
African desert, as far west as the Atlantic, and 
east as the borders of the Euphrates ; and he also 
had a universal census made of the whole of the 
inhabitants. It was the first time such a thing 
had been possible, for all the world was at last at 
peace, so that the Temple of Janus was closed for 
the third and last time in Roman history. There 
was a feeling all over the world that a great Deliv- 
erer and peaceful Prince was to be expected at 
this time. One of the Sybils was believed to have 
so sung, and the Romans, in their relief at the 
good rule of Augustus, thought he was the prom- 
ised one ; but they little knew why God had 
brought about this great stillness from all wars, 
or why He moved the heart of Augustus to make 
the decree that all the world should be taxed ■ — 
namely, that the true Prince of Peace, the real 
Deliverer, might be born in the home of His fore- 
fathers, Bethlehem, the city of David. 

The purpose of Augustus' taxing was to make a 
regular division of the empire into provinces for 
the proconsuls to govern, with lesser divisions for 
the proprietors, while many cities, especially Greek 
ones, were allowed their own magistrates, and 
some small tributary kingdoms still remained till 



278 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the old royal family should either die out or offend 
the Romans. In these lands the people were gov- 
erned by their own laws, unless they were made 
Roman citizens ; and this freedom was more and 
more granted, and saved them from paying the 
tribute all the rest had to pay, and which went to 
support the armies and other public institutions at 
Rome, and to provide the corn which was regu- 
larly distributed to such citizens as claimed it at 
Rome. A Roman colony was a settlement, genei 
ally of old soldiers who had had lands granted to 
them, and kept their citizenship ; and it was like 
another little Rome managing its own affairs, 
though subject to the mother city. There were 
many of these colonies, especially in Gaul on the 
north coast, to defend it from the Germans. 
Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The 
tribute was carefully fixed, and Augustus did his 
best to prevent the governors from preying on the 
people. 

He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, 
which was in a sad state, full of vice and riot, and 
with little of the old, noble, hardy ways of the 
former times. The educated men had studied - 
Greek philosophy till they had no faith in their 
own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up their 



Ccesar Augustus. 279 

mythology with the Greek that they really did not 
know who their own were, and could not tell who 
were the greater gods whom Decius Mus invoked 
before he rushed on the enemy ; and yet they kept 
up their worship, because their feasts were so con- 
nected with the State that everything depended on 
them ; but they made them no real judges or help- 
ers. The best men of the time were those who 
had taken up the Stoic philosophy, which held 
that virtue was above all things, whether it was 
rewarded or not ; the worst were often the Epicu- 
reans, who held that we had better enjoy all we 
can in this life, being sure of nothing else. 

Learning was much esteemed in the time of 
Augustus. He and his two great friends, Caius 
Cilnius Maecenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had 
a great esteem for scholarship and poetry, and in 
especial the house of Maecenas was always open to 
literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, 
Publius Virgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius 
Flaccus, were warm friends of his. Virgil wrote 
poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems 
called eclogues, in one of which he spoke of the 
time of Augustus in words that would almost 
serve as a prophec}^ of the kingdom of Him who 
was just born at Bethlehem. By desire of Au« 



280 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

gustus, he also wrote the JEneid, a poem on the 
war-doings of iEneas and his settlement in Italy. 

Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and 
satires, which show the habits and ways of think- 
ing of his time in a very curious manner; and 
there were many other writers whose works have 
not come down to us ; but the Latin of this time 
is the model of the language, and an Augustan age 
has ever since been a term for one in which litera- 
ture flourishes. 

All the early part of Augustus' reign was pros- 
perous, but he had no son, only a daughter named 
Julia. He meant to marry her . to Marcellus, the 
son of his sister Antonia, but Marcellus died 
young, and was lamented in Virgil's JEneid ; so 
Julia was given to Agrippa's son. Augustus' sec- 
ond wife was Livia, who had been married to 
Tiberius Claudius Nero, and had two sons, Tibe- 
rius and Drusus, whom Augustus adopted as his 
own and intended for his heirs ; and when Julia 
lost her husband Agrippa and her two young sons, 
he forced Tiberius to divorce the young wife he 
really loved to marry her. It was a great grief to 
Tiberius, and seems to have quite changed his 
character into being grave, silent, and morose. 
Julia, though carefully brought up, was one of the 




Paintings in the house of livia. 



Ccesar Augustus. 283 

most wicked and depraved of women, and almost 
broke her father's heart. He banished her to an 
island near Rhegium, and when she died there, 
would allow no funeral honors to be paid to her. 

The peace was beginning to be broken by wars 
with the Germans; and young Drusus was com- 
manding the army against them, and gaining such 
honor that he was called Germanicus, when he 
fell from his horse and died of his injuries, leaving 
one young son. He was buried at Rome, and his 
brother Tiberius walked all the way beside the 
bier, with his long flaxen hair flowing on his 
shoulders. Tiberius then went back to command 
the armies on the Rhine. Some half-conquered 
country lay beyond, and the Germans in the for- 
ests were at this time under a brave leader called 
Arminius. They were attacked by the proconsul 
Quinctilius Varus, and near the river Ems, in the 
Herycimian forest, Arminius turned on him and 
routed him completely, cutting off the whole 
army, so that only a few fled back to Tiberius to 
tell the tale, and he had to fall back and defend 
the Rhine. 

The news of this disaster was a terrible shock to 
the Emperor. He sat grieving over it, and at 
times he dashed his head against the wall, crying, 



284 Young Folks* History of Rome, 

" Varus, Varus ! give me back my legions." His 
friends were dead, he was an old man now, and 
sadness was around him. He was soon, however, 
grave and composed again ; and, as his health 
began to fail, he sent for Tiberius and put his 
affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, 
he met it calmly. He asked if there was any fear 
of a tumult on his death, and was told there was 
none ; then he called for a mirror, and saw that 
his grey hair and beard were in order, and, asking 
his friends whether he had played his part well, he 
uttered a verse from a play bidding them applaud 
his exit, bade Livia remember him, and so died in 
his seventy-seventh } r ear, having ruled fifty-eight 
years — ten as a triumvir, forty-eight alone. 



CHAPTER XXXL 

TIBERIUS AND CALIGULA. 
A.D. 14 — 41. 

NO difficulty was made about giving all the 
powers Augustus had held to his stepson, 
Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had also a right to 
the names of Julius Caesar Augustus, and was in 
his own time generally called Csesar. The Senate 
had grown too helpless to think for themselves, 
and all the choice they ever made of the consuls 
was that the Emperor gave out four names, among 
which they chose two. 

Tiberius had been a grave, morose man ever since 
he was deprived of the wife he loved, and had lost 
his brother ; and he greatly despised the mean, 
cringing ways round him, and kept to himself; but 
his nephew, called Germanicus, after his father, was 
285 



286 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

the person whom every one loved and trusted. He 
had married Agrippina, Julia's daughter, who was 
also a very good and noble person ; and when he was 
sent against the Germans, she went with him, and her 
little boys ran about among the soldiers, and were 
petted by them. One of them, Caius, was called 
by the soldiers Caligula, or the Little Shoe, because 
he wore a c?Jiga or shoe like theirs ; and he never 
lost the nickname. 

Germanicus earned his surname over again by 
driving Arminius back ; but he was more enter- 
prising than would have been approved by Augus- 
tus, who thought it wiser to guard w^hat he had 
than to make wider conquests ; and Tiberius was 
not only one of the same mind, but was jealous of 
the great love that all the army were showing for 
his nephew, and this distrust was increased when 
the soldiers in the East begged for Germanicus to 
lead them against the Parthians. He set out, visit- 
ing all the famous places in Greece by the way, 
and going to see the wonders of Egypt, but while 
in Syria he fell ill of a wasting sickness and died, 
so that many suspected the spy, Cnaeus Piso, 
whom Tiberius had sent with him, of having 
poisoned him. When his wife Agrippina came 
home, bringing his corpse to be burnt and his ashes 







Ruins of the palaces of Tiber iys. 



Tiberius and Caligula. 289 

placed in the burying-place of the Caesars, there 
was universal love and pity for her. Piso seized 
on all the offices that Germanicus had held, but 
was called back to Rome, and was just going to be 
put upon his trial when he cut his own throat. 

All this tended to make Tiberius more gloomy 
and distrustful, and when his mother Livia died he 
had no one to keep him in check, but fell under 
the influence of a man named Sejanus, who man- 
aged all his affairs for him, while he lived in a villa 
in the island of Caprese in the Bay of Naples, see- 
ing hardly any but a few intimates, given up to all 
sorts of evil luxuries and self-indulgences, and 
hating and dreading every one. Agrippina was so 
much loved and respected that he dreaded and dis- 
liked her beyond all others ; and Sejanus contrived 
to get up an accusation of plotting against the 
state, upon which she and her eldest son were ban- 
ished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean 
Sea. The other two sons, Drusus and Caius, were 
kept by Tiberius at Capreae, till Tiberius grew sus- 
picious of Drusus and threw him into prison. Se- 
janus, who had encouraged all his dislike to his own 
kinsmen, and was managing all Rome, then began 
to hope to gain the full power ; but his plans were 
guessed by Tiberius, and he caused his former 



290 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



favorite to be set upon in the senate-house and put 
to death. 

It is strange to remember that, while such dark 
deeds were being done at Rome, came the three 
years when the true Light was shining in the dark- 
ness. It was in the time of Tiberius Caesar, when 




AGKIPPINA. 



Pontius Pilatus was propraetor of Palestine, that 
our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years in teaching 
and working miracles ; then was crucified and slain 
by wicked hands, that the sin of mankind might be 
redeemed. Then He rose again from the dead and 
ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to 
make known what he had done in all the world. 



Tiberius and Caligula. 291 

To the East, where our Lord dwelt, nay, to all 
the rest ox the empire, the reign of Tiberius was a 
quiet time, with the good government arranged by 
Augustus working on. It was only his own family, 
and the senators and people of rank at Rome, who 
had much to fear from his strange, harsh, and jeal- 
ous temper. The Claudian family had in all times 
been shy, proud, and stern, and to have such power 
as belonged* to Augustus Caesar was more than 
their heads could bear. Tiberius hated and sus- 
pected everybody, and yet he did not like putting 
people to death, so he let Drusus be starved to 
death in his prison, and Agrippina chose the same 
way of dying in her island, while some of the chief 
senators received such messages that they put 
themselves to death. He led a wretched life, 
watching for treason and fearing everybody, and 
trying to drown the thought of danger in the ban- 
quets of Capreae, where the remains of his villa may 
still be seen. Onc^ he set out, intending to visit 
Rome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania 
than the sight of hundreds of country people shout- 
ing welcome so disturbed him that he hastened on 
board ship again, and thus entered the Tiber ; but 
at the very sight of the hills of Rome his terror re- 
turned, and he had his galley turned about and 



292 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

went back to his island, which he never agrain 
quitted. 

Only two males of his family were left now — a 
great-nephew and a nephew, Cams, that son of the 
second Germanicus who had been nicknamed Calie 
ula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish na 
ture, but who from his fright at Tiberius had man 
aged to keep the peace with him, and had omy once 
been for a short time in disgrace ; a&d his uncle, 
the youngest son of the first Germanicus, com- 
monly called Claudius, a very dull, heavy man, 
fond of books, but so slow and shy that he was 
considered to be wanting in brains, and thus had 
never fallen under suspicion. 

At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was 
known to be dying, he was smothered with pillows 
as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lest he 
should take vengeance on those who had for a 
moment thought him dead. He died a.d. 37, and 
the power went to Caligula, properly called Caius, 
who was only twenty-five, and who began in a 
kindly, generous spirit, which pleased the people 
and gave them hope ; but to have so much power 
was too much for his brain, and he can only be 
thought of as mad, especially after he had a severe 
illness, which made the people so anxious that he 



Tiberius and Caligula. 295 

was puffed up with the notion of his own impor- 
tance. 

He put to death all who offended him, and, 
inheriting some of Tiberius' distrust and hatred of 
the people, he cried out, when they did not admire 
one of his shows as much as he expected, " Would 
that the people of Rome had but one neck, so that 
I might behead them all at once." He planned 
great public buildings, but had not steadiness to 
carry them out ; and he became so greedy of the 
fame which, poor wretch, he could not earn, that 
he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the 
books of Livy and Virgil out of the libraries, and 
deprived the statues of the great men of old of the 
marks by which they were known — Cincinnatus 
of his curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he for- 
bade the last of the Pompeii to be called Magnus. 

He made an expedition into Gaul, and talked of 
conquering Britain, but he got no further than the 
shore of the channel, where, instead of setting sail, 
he bade the soldiers gather up shells, wdiich he 
sent home to the Senate to be placed among the 
treasures of the' Capitol, calling them the spoils of 
the conquered ocean. Then he collected the Ger- 
man slaves and the tallest Gauls he could find, com- 
manded the latter to dye their hair and beards to a 



296 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

light color, and brought them home to walk in his 
triumph. The Senate, however, were slow to un- 
derstand that he could really expect a triumph, 
and this affronted him so much that, when they 
offered him one, he would not have it, and went on 
insulting them. He made his horse a consul, 
though only for a day, and showed it with golden 
oats before it in a golden manger. Once, when 
the two consuls were sitting by him, he burst out 
laughing, to think, he said, how with one word he 
could make both their heads roll on the floor. 

The provinces were not so ill off, but the state of 
Rome w^as unbearable. Everybody was in danger, 
and at last a plot was formed for his death ; and as 
he was on his way from his house to the circus, and 
stopped to look at some singers who were going to 
perform, a party of men set upon him and killed 
him with many wounds, after he had reigned only 
five years, and when he was but thirty years old. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

CLAUDIUS AND NEKO. 
a.d. 41—68. 

P)OOR dull Claudius heard an uproar and hid 
-*- himself, thinking he was going to be mur- 
dered like his nephew, but still worse was going to 
befall him. They were looking for him to make 
him Emperor, for he was the last of his family. He 
was clumsy in figure, though his face was good, and 
he was a kind-hearted man, who made large prom- 
ises, and tried to do well ; but he was slow and 
timid, and let himself be led by wicked men and 
women, so that his rule ended no better than that 
of the former Caesars. 

He began in a spirited way, by sending troops 

who conquered the southern part of Britain, and 

making an expedition thither himself. His wife 

chose to share his triumph, which was not, as usual, 

297 



298 



Young Folks' 1 History of Rome. 



a drive in a chariot, but a sitting in armor on their 
thrones, with the eagles and standards over their 
heads, and the prisoners led up before them. 
Among them came the great British chief Carac- 
tacus, who is said to have declared that he could 
not think why those who had such palaces as there 
were at Rome should want the huts of the Britons. 
Claudius was kind to the people in the distant 

provinces. He gave the 
Jews a king again, Herod 
Agrippa, the grandson of 
the first Herod, who was 
much loved by them, but 
died suddenly after a few 
years at Csesarea, after 
the meeting with the Tyr- 
ians, when he let them 
greet him as a god. There 
were a great many Jews 
living at Rome, but those 
from Jerusalem quarrelled 
with those from Alexandria ; and one year, when 
there was a great scarcity of corn, Claudius ban- 
ished them all from Rome. 

Claudius was very unhappy in his wives. Two 
he divorced, and then married a third named Mes- 




CLAUDITJS. 



Claudius and Nero. 299 

salina, who was given up to all kinds of wicked- 
ness which he never guessed at, while she used all 
manner of arts to keep up her beauty and to deceive 
him. At last she actually married a young man 
while Claudius was absent from Rome ; but when 
this came to his knowledge, he had her put to 
death. His last wife was, however, the worst of 
all. She was the daughter of the good Germani- 
icus, and bore her mother's name of Agrippina. 
She had been previously married to Lucius Domit- 
ius iEnobarbus, by whom she had a son, whom 
Claudius adopted when he married her, though he 
had a child of his own called Britannicus, son to 
Messalina. Romans had never married their nieces 
before, but the power of the Emperors was leading 
them to trample down all law and custom, and it 
wus foi; the misfortune of Claudius that he did so in 
this case, for Agrippina's purpose was to put every 
one out of the way of her own son, who, taking al] 
the Claudian and Julian names in addition to his 
own, is commonly known as Nero. She married 
him to Claudius' daughter Octavia, and then, after 
much tormenting the Emperor, she poisoned him 
with a dish of mushrooms, and bribed his physician 
to take care that he did not recover. He died A.D. 
54, and, honest and true-hearted as he had been, 



30G Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the Humans were glad to be rid of him, and told 
mocking stories of him. Indeed, they were very 
bad in all ways themselves, and many of the ladies 
were poisoners like Agrippina, so that the city al- 
most deserved the tyrant who came after Claudius. 
Nero, the son of Agrippina by her first marriage, 
and Britannicus, the son of Claudius and Messa- 
lina, were to reign together ; but Nero was the 
elder, and as soon as Ids poor young cousin came to 
manhood, Agrippina had a dose of poison ready for 

him. 

Nero, however, began well. He had been well 
brought up by Seneca, an excellent student of the 
Stoic philosophy, who, with Burrhus, the com- 
mander of the Prsetorian Guard, guided the young 
Emperor with good advice through the first five 
years of his reign ; and though his wicked mother 
called herself Augusta, and had equal honors paid 
her with her son, not much harm was done to the 
government till Nero fell in love with a wicked 
woman, Poppaea Sabina, who was a proverb for 
vanity, and was said to keep five hundred she-asses 
that she might bathe in their milk to preserve her 
complexion. Nero wanted to marry this lady, and 
as his mother befriended his neglected wife Octavia, 
he ordered that when she went to her favorite villa- 



Claudius and Nero. 



301 



at Baiae her galley should be wrecked, and if she was 
not drowned, she should be stabbed. Octavia was 
divorced, sent to an island, and put to death there ; 
and after Nero married Poppsea, he quickly grew 
more violent and savage. 

Burrhus died about the same time, and Seneca 
alone could not restrain the 
Emperor from his foolish 
vanity. . He would descend 
into the arena of the great 
amphitheatre and sing to the 
lyre his own compositions ; 
and he showed off his char- 
ioteering in the circus be- 
fore the whole assembled 
city, letting no one go away 
till the performance was nero. 

over. It very much shocked the patricians, but the 
mob were delighted, and he chiefly cared for their 
praises. He was building a huge palace, called the 
Golden House because of its splendid decorations ; 
and, needing money, he caused accusations to be 
got up against all the richer men that he might 
have their hoards. 

A terrible fire broke out in Rome, which raged 
for six days, and entirely destroyed fourteen quar- 




302 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

ters of the city. While it was burning, Nero, full 
of excitement, stood watching it, and sang to his 
lyre the description of the burning of Troy. A 
report therefore arose that he had actually caused 
the fire for the amusement of watching it ; and to 
put this out of men's minds he accused the Chris- 
tians. The Christian faith had begun to be known 
in Rome during the last reign, and it was to Nero, 
as Caesar, that St. Paul had appealed, He had 
spent two years in a hired house of his own at 
Rome, and thus had been in the guard-room of the 
Praetorians, but he was released after being tried 
at "Caesar's judgment-seat," and remained at large 
until this sudden outburst which caused the first 
persecution. Then he was taken at Nicopolis, and 
St. Peter at Rome, and they were thrown into the 
Mamertine dungeon. Rome counts St. Peter as 
her first bishop. On the 29th of June, A.D. 66, 
both suffered ; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, being 
beheaded with the sword ; St. Peter crucified, with 
his head, by his own desire, downwards. Many 
others suffered at the same time, some being thrown 
to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths 
covered with pitch, and slowly burnt to light the 
games in the Emperor's gardens. At last the peo- 
ple were shocked, and cried out for these horrors 



Claudius and Nero. 303 

to end. And Nero, who cared for the people, 
turned his hatred and cruelty against men of higher 
class whose fate they heeded less. So common 
was it to have a message advising a man to put 
himself to death rather than be sentenced, that 
every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's 
old tutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and 
had joined in a plot for overthrowing him, but it 
was found out, and Senaca had to die by his own 
hand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his 
sake, was to open their veins, get into a warm bath, 
and bleed to death. 

Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off 
at Olympus and the Isthmus, at the same time 
robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their best 
statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House ; for 
the Romans had no original art — .they could only 
imitate the Greeks and employ Greek artists. But 
danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor 
could be endured no longer, and the generals of 
the armies in the provinces began to threaten him, 
they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every 
one at Rome seemed to be. 

The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, 
who was seventy-two years old, but to whom Au- 
gustus had said when he was a little boy, " You 



304 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

too shall share my taste of empire," began to move 
homewards to attack the tyrant, and the army from 
Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearly wild 
with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing 
his hair and clothes ; and the people began to turn 
against him in anger at a dearth of corn, saying he 
spent eve^thing on his own pleasures. As Galba 
came nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for de- 
liverance, and the Praetorian Guard showed that 
they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would 
not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found 
himself alone, and vainly called for some one to 
kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself. He 
fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the 
woods till he heard that, if he was caught, he 
would be put to death in the "ancient fashion," 
which he was told w^as being fixed with his neck 
in a forked stick and beaten to death. Then, hear- 
ing the hoofs of the horses of his pursuers, he set a 
sword against his breast and made a slave drive it 
home, and was groaning his last when the horse- 
men came up. He was but 30 years old, and was 
the last Emperor who could trace any connection, 
even by adoption, with Augustus. He perished 
A. d. 68. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE FLAVIAN FAMILY. 

62—96. 

THE ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus 
Flavius Vespasian us, a stern, rigid old sol- 
dier, who, with his son of the same name, was in 
the East, preparing to put down a great rising of 
the Jews. He waited to see what was going to 
happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had 
offended the soldiers by his saving waj^s ; there 
was a rising against him, and another soldier named 
Otho became Emperor ; but the legions from Gaul 
marched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and 
he killed himself to prevent other bloodshed. 

When the Eastern army heard of these changes, 
they declared they would make an Emperor like 
the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian as 
305 



306 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Emperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, 
and set out himself for Italy, where Vitellius had 
given himself up to riot and feasting. There was 
a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome 
itself, and the Gauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' 
army, did even more mischief than the Gauls of old 
under Brennus ; but at last Vespasian triumphed. 
Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along 
with the point of a lance, was put to death. There 
had been eighteen months of confusion, and Ves- 
pasian began his reign in the year 70. 

It was just then that his son Titus, having taken 
all the strongholds in Galilee, though they were 
desperately defended by the Jews, had advanced 
to besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had 
heeded the warning that our blessed Lord had left 
them, and were safe at a city in the hills called 
Pella ; but the Jews who were left within were 
fiercely quarrelling among themselves, and fought 
with one another as savagely as they fought with 
the enemy. Titus threw trenches round and block- 
aded the city ; and the famine within grew to be 
most horrible. Some died in their houses, but the 
fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the 
streets, breaking into the houses where they thought 
food was to be found. When they smelt roasting 



The Flavian Family. 307 

in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they 
rushed in and asked for the meat, but even they 
turned away in horror when she uncovered the 
remains of her own little child, whom she had been 
eating. At last the Roman engines broke down 
the walls of the lower city, and with desperate 
struggling the Romans entered, and found every 
house full of dead women and children. Still they 
had the Temple to take, and the Jews had gathered 
there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah would 
appear and save them. Alas ! they had rejected 
Him long ago, and this was the time of judgment. 
The Romans fought their way in, up the marble 
steps, slippeiy with blood and choked with dead 
bodies ; and fire raged round them. Titus would 
have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of the 
world, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden 
latticed window, and the flame spread rapidly. 
Titus had just time to look round on all the rich 
gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He 
took a terrible vengeance on the Jews. Great 
numbers were crucified, and the rest were either 
taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to 
fight with wild beasts, or were sold as slaves, in such 
numbers that, cheap as they were, no one would 
buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has 



308 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



lived on in its dispersion ever since. The city was 
utterly overthrown and sown with salt, and such 
treasures as could be saved from the fire were car- 
ried in the triumph of Titus — namely, the shew- 
bread table, the seven-branched candlestick, and 




ARCH OF TITUS. 



the silver trumpets — and laid up as usual among 
the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are 
to be seen sculptured on the triumphal arch built 
in honor of Titus, which still stands at Rome. 

These Flavian Caesars were great builders. Much 
had to be restored at Rome after the two great 



The Flavian Family. 309 

fires, and they built a new Capitol and new Forum, 
besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and 
setting up on part of the site the magnificent baths 
known as the Baths of Titus. Going to the bath, 
to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by 
the slaves, was the great amusement of an idle 
Roman's day, for in the waiting-rooms he met all 
his friends and heard the news ; and these rooms 
were splendid halls, inlaid with marble, and adorned 
with the statues and pictures Nero had brought 
from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun 
what was then called the Flavian Amphitheatre, 
but is now known as the Colosseum, from the 
colossal statue that stood at its door — a wonderful 
place, with a succession of galleries on stone vaults 
round the area, on which every rank and station, 
from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to the 
slaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators 
and beasts struggle and perish, on sands mixed 
with scarlet grains to hide the stain, and perfumed 
showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under 
silken embroidered awnings to keep off the sun. 

Vespasian was an upright man, and though he 
was stern and unrelenting, his reign was a great 
relief after the capricious tyranny of the last 
Claudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain 



310 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

and simple in their habits, and tried to put down 
the horrid riot and excess that were ruining the 
Romans, and they were feared and loved. They 
had great successes too. Britain was subdued and 
settled as far as the northern hills, and a great 
rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was 
accused of being avaricious, but Nero had left the 
treasury in such a state that he could hardly have 
governed without being careful. He died in the 
year 79, at seventy years old. When he found 
himself almost gone, he desired to be lifted to his 
feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing. 

He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus 
was more of a scholar than his father, and was gen- 
tle and kindly in manner, so that he was much be- 
loved. He used to say, " I have lost a day," when 
one went by without his finding some kind act to do. 
He was called the delight of mankind, and his reign 
would have been happy but for another great fire 
in Rome, which burnt what Nero's fire had left. 
In his time, too, Mount Vesuvius suddenly woke 
from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed 
the two cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pom- 
peii. The philosopher Plinius, who wrote on 
geography and natural history, was stifled by the sul- 
phurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones, 



The Flavian Family. 313 

and ashes cast up by the mountain. His nephew, 
called Pliny the younger, has left a full account of 
the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that 
hung over the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, 
and the fall at last of the ashes and lava. Drusilla, 
the wife of Felix, the governor before whom St. 
Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was 
covered with solid lava, so that very little could be 
recovered from it ; but Pompeii, being overwhelmed 
with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern 
days has been discovered, showing perfectly what an 
old Roman town was like — amphitheatre, shops, 
bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have been 
found : a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, 
a priest crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded 
into a vault, a sentry at his post ; and in other 
cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression of 
the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into 
them the forms of the victims have been recovered, 
especially two women, elder and younger, just as 
they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden 
in her mother's robe. 

Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law 
Tacitus, who wrote the history of those reigns, laid 
the blame on his brother Domitian, who was as 
cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does 



314 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

seem to have been shocked at the wickedness of 
the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown 
shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patri- 
cian families in Rome well brought up enough to be- 
come one. The blame was laid on forsaking the old 
religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," 




PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 



which meant Christianity, was persecuted again. 
Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the Emperor, was 
thus accused and put to death; and probably it 
was this which led to St. John, the last of the 
Apostles, being brought to Rome and placed in a 



The Flavian Family. 315 

cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate ; but 
a miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did 
him no hurt, upon which he was banished to the 
Isle of Patmos. 

The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, 
and the shows of gladiators, fights with beasts, and 
even sea-fights, when the arena was flooded, ex- 
ceeded all that had gone before. There were fights 
between women and women, dwarfs and cranes. 
There is an inscription at Rome which has made 
some believe that the architect of the Colosseum 
was one Gandentius, who afterwards perished there 
as a Christian. 

Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a 
gold crown with little figures of the gods on it. 
He did strange things. Once he called together all 
his council in the middle of the night on urgent 
business, and while they expected to hear of some 
foreign enemy on the borders, a monstrous turbot 
was brought in, and they were consulted whether 
it was to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on 
purpose for it. Another time he invited a number 
of guests, and they found themselves in a black 
marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name 
graven on a column like a tomb, a feast laid as at a 
funeral, and black boys to wait on them ! This 



316 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



time it was only a joke ; but Domitian did but so 
many people to death that he grew frightened lest 
vengeance should fall on him, and he had his halls 
lined with polished marble, that he might see as in 
a glass if any one approached him from behind. 
But this did not save him. His wife found that he 
meant to put her to death, and contrived that a 
party of servants should murder him, a.d. 96. 




COIN OF NEBOo 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE AGE OF THE AOTONINES. 
96—194. 

DOMITIAN is called the last of the twelve 
Caesars, though all who came after him 
called themselves Caesar. He had no son, and a 
highly esteemed old senator named Cocceius Nerva 
became Emperor. He was an upright man, who 
tried to restore the old Roman spirit ; and as he 
thought Christianity was only a superstition which 
spoiled the ancient temper, he enacted that all 
should die who would not offer incense to the gods, 
and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of An- 
tioch, who had been bred up among the Apostles. 
He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St. Polycarp, 
Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one 
of a set of letters which remain to this day. He 
was then thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. 

It seems strange that the good Emperors were 
317 



318 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

often worse persecutors than the bad ones, but the 
fact was that the bad ones let the people do as they 
pleased, as long as they did not offend them ; while 
the good ones were trying to bring back what they 
read of in Livy's history, of plain living and high 
thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of 
the Christians than that they were people who did 
not worship the gods. Moreover, Julius Trajanus, 
whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign after 
him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there 
were laws in force against the Christians. When 
Pliny the younger was propraetor of the province 
of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Em- 
peror what to do about the Christians, telling him 
what he had been able to find out about them from 
two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, 
that they were wont to meet together at night or 
early morning, to sing together, and eat what he 
called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered 
that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if 
they were brought before him, the law must take 
its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of the Chris 
tians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, 
from which the city was chiefly built, aud which 
^ere hollowed out in long galleries. Slaves and 
^nvicts worked them, and they were thus made 



The Age of the Antonines. 



319 



known to the Christians, who buried their dead in 
places hollowed at the sides, used the galleries for 
their churches, and often hid there when there was 
search made for them. 




TEMPLE OE ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA. 

Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title 
of Optimus, the Best, as no one else has ever done. 
He was a great captain too, and conquered Dacia, 
the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, 
and Pruth, and the Carpathian Hills ; and he also 



320 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

defeated the Parthians, and said if he had been a 
younger man he would have gone as far as Alex- 
ander. As it was, the empire was at its very 
largest in his reign, and he was a very great builder 
and improver, so that one of his successors called 
him a wall-flower, because his name was everywhere 
to be seen on wails and bridges and roads — some 
of which still remain, as does his tall column at 
Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven 
round it from top to bottom. He was on his way 
back from the East when, in 117, he died at Cilicia, 
leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Pub- 
lius JEtius Haclrianus, w T ho took the command w 7 ith 
great vigor, but found he could not keep Dacia, 
and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He 
came to Britain, where the Roman settlements 
were tormented by the Picts. There he built the 
famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them 
out. He was wonderfully active, and hastened 
from one end of the empire to the other wherever his 
presence was needed. There was a revolt of the 
Jews in the far East, under a man who pretended 
to be the Messiah, and called himself the Son of a 
Star. This was put down most severely, and no 
Jew was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over 
which a new city was built, and called after the 



The Age of the Antonines. 321 

Emperor's second name, JElia Capitolina $ and, to 
drive the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter 
was built where the Temple had been, and one to 
Venus on Mount Calvary. 

But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened 
kindly to an explanation of the faith which was 
shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian 
philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand toAver- 
like monument, surrounded by stages of columns 
and arches, which was to be called the Mole of 
Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its 
ornaments. Before his death, in 138, he had 
chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, a 
good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old ; 
for it had been found that youths who became Em- 
perors had their heads turned by such unbounded 
power, while elder men cared for the work and 
duty. Antoninus was so earnest for his people's 
welfare that they called him Pius. He avoided 
wars, only defended the empire ; but he was a great 
builder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, 
much further north, and set up another column at 
Rome, and in Gaul built a great amphitheatre at 
Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which 
is still standing, and is called the Pont du Gard. 

His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who sue- 



322 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

ceeclecl him, is commonly called Marcus Aurelius, 
as a choice among his many names. He was a deep 
student and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest 
longing for truth and virtue, though he knew not 
how to seek them where alone they could be found ; 
and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on 
his empire, and the people thought the gods were 
offended, he let them persecute the Christians, 
whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resur- 
rection and of Heaven seemed weak and foolish 
to him beside his stern, proud, hopeless Stoicism. 
So the aged Poly carp, Bishop of Smyrna, the last 
pupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to 
be burnt in the theatre of his own city, though, as 
the fire curled round him in a curtain of flame 
without touching him, he was actually slain with the 
sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there 
was a fearful persecution which fell on women of 
all ranks, and where Blandina the slave, under the 
most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for 
her brave patience. 

Aurelius was fighting hard with the German 
tribes on the Danube, who gave him no rest, and 
threatened to break into the empire. While pur- 
suing them, he and his army were shut into a strong 
place where they could get no water, and were 



The Age of the Antonines. 323 

perishing with thirst, when a whole legion, all 
Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud 
came up, a welcome shower of rain descended, and 
was the saving of the thirsty host. It was said that 
the name of the Thundering Legion was given to 
this division in consequence, though on the column 
reared by Aurelius it is Jupiter who is shown send- 
ing rain on the ihirsty host, who are catching it in 
their shields. After this there was less persecution, 
but every sort of trouble — plague, earthquake, 
famine, and war — beset the empire on all sides, and 
the Emperor toiled in vain against these troubles, 
writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad 
and sick at heart he was, and how little comfort 
philosophy gave him, while his eyes were blind to 
the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while 
still in the prime of life, in the year 180, and with 
him ended the period of good Emperors, which the 
Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius 
was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but 
he was a foolish good-for-nothing youth, who would 
not bear the fatigues and toils of real war, though he 
had no shame in showing off in the arena, and is said 
to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, 
besides killing wild beasts. He boasted of having 
slain one hundred lions with one hundred arrows, 



324 Young Folks' History of Home. 

and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shaped 
arrows which cnt off their heads, the poor things 
being fastened where he could not miss them, and 
the Romans applauding as if for some noble deed. 
They let him reign sixteen years before he was 
murdered, and then a good old soldier named Per- 
tinax began to reign; but the Praetorian Guard 
had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and 
the moment they felt the pressure of a firm hand 
they attacked the palace, killed the Emperor, cut 
off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, 
asking who would be Emperor. An old senator 
was foolish enough to offer them a large sum of 
they would choose him, and this put it into their 
heads to rush out to the ramparts and proclaim 
that they would sell the empire to the highest 
bidder. 

A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, 
Was at supper with his family when he heard that 
the Praetorians were selling the empire by auction, 
and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate 
of about c£200 to each man. The Emperor being 
really the commander-in-chief, with other offices 
attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of 
right to the choice ; but the other armies at a dis- 
tance, who were really fighting and guarding the 



The Age of the Antonines. 



325 



empire, had no notion of letting the matter be 
settled by the Praetorians, mere guardsmen, who 
stayed at home and tried to rule the rest ; so each 
army chose its own general and marched on Rome, 
and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius 
Severus, who got there first ; whereupon the Prae- 
torians killed their foolish Emperor and joined him- 




CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PRAETORIAN INFLUENCE. 

197—284. 

SEPTIMUS SEVERUS was an able Emperor, 
and reigned a long time. He was stern and 
harsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the 
time ; and he was very active, seldom at Rome, but 
flashing as it were from one end of the empire to 
the other, wherever ho was needed, and keeping 
excellent order. There was no regular persecution 
of the Christians in his time ; but at Lyons, wdiere 
the townspeople were in great numbers Christians, 
the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in 
and made a horrible massacre of them, in which the 
bishop, St. Irenaeus, was killed. So few country 
people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a 
peasant, came to be used as a term for a heathen. 

Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great 
326 



The Praetorian Influence. 



327 



builder and road-maker. The whole empire was 
connected by a network of paved roads made by 
the soldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, 
straight, smooth, and so solid that they remain to 
to this day. This made communication so rapid 
that government was 
possible to an active 
man like him. He gave 
the Parthians a check ; 
and, when an old man, 
came to Britain and 
marched far north, but 
he saw it was impos- 
sible to guard An- 
tonius' wall between 
the Forth and Clyde, 
and only strengthened 
the rampart of Hadrian from the Tweed to the Sol^ 
way. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and 
his last watchword was " Labor ! " His wife was 
named Julia Domna, and he left two sons, usually 
called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire ; 
but Geta was soon stabbed by his brother's own 
hand, and then Caracalla showed himself even 
worse than Coinmodus, till he in his turn was mur- 
dered in 217. 




SEPTIMUS SEVEEUS. 



328 



Young Folks* History of Rome. 



His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called 
Julia Ssemias, who lived at Antioch, and had two 
daughters, Ssemias and Mammaea, who each had a 
son, Elagabalus — so called after the idol supposed 
to represent the sun, whose priest at Emesa he was — . 
and Alexander Severus. The Praetorian Guard, in 




their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose 
Elagabalus, a lad of nineteen, who showed himself 
a poor, miserable, foolish wretch, who did the most 
absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess, 
and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheas- 
ants. Sometimes he would get together a festival 



The Prcetorian Influence. 329 

party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, or short, 
all bald, or gouty ; and at others he would keep 
the wedding of his namesake god and Pallas, 
making matches between the gods and god- 
desses all over Italy ; and he carried on his service 
to his god with the same barbaric dances in a 




ALEXANDER SEVERUS. 



i range costume as at Emesa, to the great disgust 
q+[ the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him 
to adopt his cousin Alexander, a 3^outh of much 
more promise, who took- the name of Severus. The 
soldiers were charmed with him ; Elagabalus be- 
came jealous, and was going to strip him of his 
honors; but this angered the Praetorians, so that 
they put the elder Emperor to death in 222. 



330 Young Folks' History of Borne. 

Alexander Sever us was a good and just prince, 
whose mother is believed to have been a Christian, 
and he had certainly learned enough of the Divine 
Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was for- 
bearing. He loved virtue, but he did not accept 
the faith, and would only look upon our Blessed 
Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His 
statue with that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all 
whom he thought great teachers of mankind, in a 
private temple of his own, as if they were all on a 
level. He never came an) r nearer to the faith, and 
after thirteen years of good and firm government 
he was killed in a mutiny of the Praetorians in 235. 

These guards had all the power, and set up and 
put down Emperors so rapidly that there are hardly 
any names worth remembering. In the unsettled 
state of the empire no one had time to persecute 
the Christians, and their numbers grew and pros- 
pered ; in many places they had churches, with 
worship going on openly, and their Bishops were 
known and respected. The Emperor Philip, called 
the Arabian, who was actually a Christian, though 
he would not own it openly, when he was at An- 
tioch, joined in the service at Easter, and presented 
himself to receive the Holy Communion ; but 
Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have 



The Prcetorlan Influence. 331 

done open penance for the crimes by which he had 
come to the purple, and renounced all remains of 
heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put 
off his repentance ; and the next year celebrated 
the games called the Seculae, because they took 
place every Seculum or hundredth year, with all 
their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splen- 
dor, in honor of this being Rome's thousandth 
birthday. 

Soon after, another general named Decius was 
chosen by the army on the German frontier, and 
Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wanted 
to be an old-fashioned Roman ; he believed in the 
gods, and thought the troubles of the empire came of 
forsaking them ; and as the Parthians molested the 
East, and the Goths and Germans the North,, and 
the soldiers seemed more ready to kill their Em- 
perors than the enemy, he thought to win back 
prosperity by causing all to return to the old wor- 
ship, and begun the worst persecution the Church 
had yet known. Rome, Antioch, Carthage, Alex- 
andria, and all the chief cities were searched for 
Christians. If they would not throw a handful of 
incense on the idol's altar or disown Christ, they 
were given over to all the horrid torments cruel in- 
genuity could invent, in the hope of subduing their 



332 



Young Folks' History of Borne. 



constancy. Some fell, but the greater number 
were firm, and witnessed a glorious confession be- 
fore, in 251, Decius and his son were both slain in 
battle in Msesia. 

The next Emperor whose name is worth remem- 
bering was Valerian, who had to make war against 




TEMPLE OP THE SUN AT PALMYRA. 

the Persians. The old stock of Persian kings, pro- 
fessing to be descended from Cyrus, and, like him. 
adoring fire, had overcome the Parthians, and were 
spreading the Persian power in the East, under 
their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and 
on the banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian 




THE CATACOMBS AT ROME. 



333 



The Prcetorian Influence, 335 

tn a terrible battle at Edessa. Valerian was made 
prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who was 
forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up 
by his back when mounting on horseback ; and 
when he died, his skin was dyed purple, stuffed, 
and hung up in a temple. 

The best resistance made to Sapor was by Ode- 
natus, a Syrian chief, and his beautiful Arabian 
wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, 
on an oasis in the desert between Palestine and 
Assyria, till Sapor retreated. Finding that no 
Notice was taken of them by Rome, they called 
themselves Emperor and Empress. The city was 
very beautifully adorned with splendid buildings 
in the later Greek style ; and Zenobia, who : eigned 
with her young sons after her husband's death, was 
well read in Greek classics and philosophy, and 
was a pupil of the philosopher Longinus. Aurelian, 
becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this 
strange little kingdom, and was bravely resisted by 
Zenobia; but he defeated her, made her prisoner, 
and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome. 
She afterwards lived with her children in Italy. 

Aurelian saw perils closing in on all sides of the 
empire, and thought it time to fortify the city of 
Rome itself, which had long spread beyond the old 



336 Young Folks' History of Rome, 

walls of Servius Tullus. He traced a new circuit, 
and built the wall, the lines of which are the same 
that still enclose Rome, though the wall itself has 
been several times thrown down and rebuilt. He 
also built the city in Gaul which still bears his 
name, slightly altered into Orleans. He was one 
of those stern, brave Emperors, who vainly tried to 
bring back old Roman manners, and fancied it was 
Christianity that corrupted them ; and he was just 
preparing for a great persecution when he was mur- 
dered in his tent, and there were three or four more 
Emperors set up and then killed almost as soon as 
their reign was well begun. The last thirty of 
them are sometimes called the Thirty Tyrants. 
This power of the Praetorian Guard, of setting up 
and pulling down their Emperor as being primarily 
their general, lasted altogether fully a hundred 
years. 




COIN OF SEVERUS. 



CHAPTER XXXVL 

' THE DIVISION OE THE EMPIRE. 

284—312. 

A DALMATIAN soldier named Diodes had 
been told by a witch that he should become 
Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a 
great hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed 
to bring him nearer to the purple, till, when the 
army was righting on the Tigris, the Emperor 
Numerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered 
himself as his successor. Aper is the Latin for a 
boar, and Diocles, perceiving the scope of the 
prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, 
and was hailed Emperor by the legions. He 
lengthened his name out to Diocletianus, to sound 
more imperial, and began a dominion unlike that of 

any who had gone before. They had only been, 
337 - 



338 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

as it were, overgrown generals, chosen by the Prae- 
torians or some part of the army, and at the same 
time taking the tribuneship and other offices for 
life. Diocletian, though called Emperor, reigned 
like the kings of the East. He broke the strength 
of the Praetorians, so that they could never again 
kill one Emperor and elect 
another as before ; and he 
never would visit Rome lest he 
should be obliged to acknowl- 
edge the authority of the Sen- 
ate, whose power he contrived 
so entirely to take away, that 
thenceforward Senator be- 
came only a complimentary 
title, of which people in the 
subdued countries were very 
proud. 

He divided the empire into two parts, feeling 
that it was beyond the management of any one 
man, and chose an able soldier of low birth but 
much courage, named Maximian, to rule the West 
from Trier as his capital, while he himself ruled 
the East from Mcomedia. Each of the two Em- 
perors chose a future successor, who was to rule in 
part of his dominions under the title of Csesar, and 




DIOCLETIAN. 



The Division of the Empire. 339 

to reign after him. Diocletian chose his son-in- 
law Galerius, and sent him to fight on the Danube ; 
and Maximian chose, as Caesar, Constantius Chlorus, 
who commanded in Britain, Gaul, and Spain ; and 
thus everything was done to secure that a strong 
hand should be ready everywhere to keep the 
legions from setting up Emperors at their own will. 
Diocletian was esteemed the most just and kind 
of the Emperors ; Maximian, the fiercest and most 
savage. He had a bitter hatred of the Christian 
name, which was shared by Galerius ; but, on the 
other hand, the wife of Diocletian was believed to 
be a Christian, and Helena, the wife of Constantius, 
was certainly one. However, Maximian and Gale- 
rius were determined to put down the faith. Max- 
imian is said to have had a whole legion of Chris- 
tians in his army, called the Theban, from the 
Egyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacri- 
fice, and on their refusal had them decimated — 
that is, every tenth man was slain. They were 
called on again to sacrifice, but still were staunch*, 
and after a last summons were, every man of them, 
slain as they stood with their tribune Maurice, 
whose name is still held in high honor in the Enga- 
dine. Dioclesian was slow to become a persecutor, 
until a fire broke out in his palace at Nicomedia, 



340 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

which did much mischief in the city, but spared the 
chief Christian church. The enemies of the Chris- 
tians accused them of having caused it, and Dio- 
clesian required every one in his household to clear 
themselves by offering sacrifice to Jupiter. His 
wife and daughter yielded, but most of his officers 
and slaves held out, and died in cruel torments. 
One slave was scourged till the flesh parted from 
his bones, and then the wounds were rubbed with 
salt and vinegar ; others were racked till their 
bones were out of joint, and others hung up by 
their hands to hooks, with weights fastened to their 
feet. A city in Phrygia was surrounded by sol- 
diers and every person in it slaughtered ; and the 
Christians were hunted down like wild beasts from 
one end of the empire to the other, everywhere 
save in Britain, where, under Constantius, only one 
martyrdom is reported to have taken place, namely, 
that of the soldier at Verulam, St. Alban. It was 
the worst of all the persecutions, and lasted the 
longest. 

The two Emperors were good soldiers, and kept 
the enemies back, so that Diocletian celebrated a 
triumph at Nicomedia ; but he had an illness just 
after, and, as he was fifty-nine years old, he decided 
that it would be better to resign the empire while 



The Division of the Empire. 



341 



he was still in his full strength, and he persuaded 
Maximian to do the same, in 305, making Constan- 
tius and Galerius Emperors in their stead. Con- 
stantius stopped the persecution in the West, but 




DIOCLETIAN IN RETIREMENT. 



it raged as much as ever in the East under Galerius 
and the Caesar he had appointed, whose name was 
Daza, but who called himself Maximin. Constan- 
tius fought bravely, both in Britain and Gaul, with 
the enemies who tried to break into the empire. 



342 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

The Franks, one of the Teuton nations, were con- 
stantly breaking in on the eastern frontier of Gaul, 
and the Caledonians on the northern border of the 
settlement of Britain. He opposed them gallantly, 
and was much loved, but he died at York, 305, 
and Galerius passed over his son Constantine, and 
appointed a favorite of his own named Licinius. 
Constantine was so much beloved by the army and 
people of Gaul that they proclaimed him Emperor, 
and he held the province of Britain and Gaul se- 
curely against all enemies. 

Old Maximian, who had only retired on the 
command of Diocletian, now came out from his 
retreat, and called on his colleague to do the same ; 
but Diocletian was far too happy on his little farm 
at Salona to leave it, and answered the messenger 
who urged him again to take upon him the purple 
with — " Come and look at the cabbages I have 
planted." However, Maximian was accepted as 
the true Emperor by the Senate, and made his son 
Maxentius, Caesar, while he allied himself with 
Constantine, to whom he gave his daughter Fausta 
in marriage. Maxentius turned out a rebel, and 
drove the old man away to Marseilles, where Con- 
stantine gave him a home on condition of his not 
interfering with government; but he could not 



The Division of the Empire. 



343 



rest, and raised the troops in the south against his 
son-in-law. Constantine's army marched eagerly 
against him and made him prisoner, but even then 
he was pardoned ; yet he still plotted, and tried to 




CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. 



persuade his daughter Fausta to murder her hus- 
band. Upon this Constantine was obliged to have 
him put to death. 

Galerius died soon after of a horrible disease, 
during which he was filled with remorse for his 
cruelties to the Christians, sent tu entreat their 



344 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

prayers, and stopped the persecution. On his death, 
Licinius seized part of his dominions, and there 
were four men calling themselves Emperors — 
Licinius in Asia, Daza Maximin in Egypt, Maxen- 
tius at Rome, and Constantine in Gaul. 

There was sure soon to be a terrible struggle. It 
began between Maxentius and Constantine. This 
last marched out of Gaul and entered Italy. He 
had hitherto seemed doubtful between Christianity 
and paganism, but a wonder was seen in the heav- 
ens before his whole army, namely, a bright cross 
of light in the noon-tide sky with the words plainly 
to be traced round it, In hoc signo vinces — " In 
this sign thou shalt conquer.'' This sight decided 
his mind ; he proclaimed himself a Christian, and 
from Milan issued forth an edict promising the 
Christians his favor and protection. Great vic- 
tories were gained by him at Turin, Verona, and 
on the banks of the Tiber, where, at the battle of 
the Milvian Bridge in 312, Maxentius was defeated, 
and was drowned in crossing the river. Constan- 
tine entered Rome, and was owned by the Senate 
as Emperor of the West. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

COKSTANTINE THE GREAT. 
312—337. 

CONSTANTINE entered Rome as a Christian, 
and from his time forward Christianity pre- 
vailed. He reigned only over the West at first, 
but Licinius overthrew Daza, treating him and his 
family with great barbarity, and then Constantine, 
becoming alarmed at his power, marched against 
him, beat him in Thrace, and ten years later made 
another attack on him. In the battle of Adrian- 
ople, Licinius was defeated, and soon after made 
prisoner and put to death. Thus, in 323, Constan- 
tine became the only Emperor. 

He was a Christian in faith, though not as yet 
baptized. He did not destroy heathen temples nor 

forbid heathen rites, but he did everything to favor 
345 



34G Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the Christians and make Christian laws. Churches 
were rebuilt and ornamented ; Sunday was kept as 
the day of the Lord, and on it no business might 
be transacted except the setting free of a slave ; 
soldiers might go to church, and all that had made 
it difficult and dangerous to confess the faith was 
taken away. Constantine longed to see his whole 
empire Christian ; but at Rome, heathen ceremonies 
were so bound up with every action of the state or 
of a man's life that it was very hard for the Em- 
peror to avoid them, and he therefere spent as little 
time as he could there, but was generally at the 
newer cities of Aries and Trier ; and at last he de- 
cided on founding a fresh capital, to be a Christian 
city from the first. 

The place he chose was the shore of the Bos- 
phorus, where Asia and Europe are only divided 
by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek 
city of Bjzantium already stood. From hence he 
hoped to be able to rule the East and the West, 
He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made 
a palace there for himself, and called it after his 
own name — Constantinople, or New Rome, neither 
of which names has it ever lost. He carried many 
of the ornaments of Old Rome thither, but conse- 
crated them as far as possible, and he surrounded 



Oonstantine the Grreat. 



347 



himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother 
Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit 
the spots where our blessed Lord lived and died, 
and to clear them from profanation. The churches 
she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of 
the nativity at Bethlehem have been kept up even 
to this day. 

There was now no danger in being a Christian, 




CONSTANTINOPLE. 



and thus worldly and even wicked men and women 
owned themselves as belonging to the Church. So 
much evil prevailed that many good men fled from 
the sight of it, thinking to do more good by pray- 



348 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

ing in lonely places free from temptation than by 
living in the midst of it. These were called her- 
mits, and the first and most noted of them was St. 
Anthony. The Thebaid, or hilly country above 
Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. When 
they banded together in brotherhoods they were 
called monks, and the women who did the like were 
called nuns. 

At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named 
Arius, who fell away from the true faith respecting 
our blessed Lord, and taught that he was not from 
the beginning, and was not equal with God the 
Father. The Patriarch of Alexandria tried to 
silence him, but he led away an immense number 
of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls 
to confess that Jesus Christ is God. At last Con- 
stantine resolved to call together a council of the 
Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, 
to declare what was the truth that had been always 
held from the beginning. The place he appointed 
for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and he 
paid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hun- 
dred and eighteen in number, who came from all 
parts of the empire, east and west, so as to form 
the first Oecumenical or General Council of the 
Church. Many of them still bore the marks of the 



Constantine the Great. 351 

persecutions tliey had borne in Diocletian's time : 
some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off; 
some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or 
were bowed by hard labor in the mines. The Em- 
peror, in purple and gold, took a seat in the coun- 
cil as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet 
baptized ; and the person who used the most power- 
ful arguments was a young deacon of Alexandria 
named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared 
that the doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the 
Church had held from the first, and the confession of 
faith was drawn up which we call the Nicene Creed. 
Three hundred Bishops at once set their seals to it, 
and of those who at first refused all but two were 
won over, and these were banished. It was then 
that the faith of the Church began to be called 
Catholic or universal, and orthodox or straight 
teaching ; while those who attacked it were called 
heretics, and their doctrine heresy, from a Greek 
word meaning to choose. 

The troubles were not at an end with the Coun- 
cil and Creed of Nicea. Arius had pretended to 
submit, but he went on with his false teaching, and 
the courtly Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who 
had the ear of the Emperor, protected him. Atha- 
nasius had been made Patriarch, or Father-Bishop, 



352 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



of Alexandria, and with all his might argued 
against the false doctrine, and cut off those who fol- 
lowed it from the Church. But Eusebius so talked 
that Constantine fancied quiet was better than 
truth, and sent orders to Athanasius that no one was 




CATACOMBS. 



to be shut out. This the Patriarch could not obey, 
and the Emperor therefore banished him to Gaul. 
Arius then went to Constantinople to ask the Em- 
peror to insist on his being received back to com- 
munion. He declared that he believed that which 
he held in his hand, showing the Creed of Nicea, 



Constantine the Great. 353 

but keeping hidden under it a statement of his own 
heresy. 

" Go," said Constantine; "if your faith agree 
with your oath, you are blameless ; if not, God be 
your judge ; " and he commanded that Arius should 
be received to communion the next day, which was 
Sunday. But on his way to church, among a great 
number of his friends, Arius was struck with sud- 
den illness, and died in a few minutes. The Em- 
peror, as well as the Catholics, took this as a clear 
token of the hand of God, and Constantine was 
cured of any leaning to the Arians, though he still 
believed the men who called Athanasius factious 
and troublesome, and therefore would not recall 
him from exile. 

The great grief of Constantine's life was, that 
he put his eldest son Crispus to death on a wicked 
accusation of his stepmother Fausta. On learning 
the truth, he caused a silver statue to be raised, 
bearing the inscription, " My son, whom I unjustly 
condemned ; " and when other crimes of Fausta 
came to light, he caused her to be suffocated. 

Baptism was often in those days put off to the 
end of life, that there might be no more sin after it, 
and Constantine was not baptized till his last illness 
had begun, when he was sixty-four years old, and 



354 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



he sent for Sylvester, Pope or Bishop of Rome, 
where he then was, and received from him baptism, 
absolution, and Holy Communion. After this, 
Constantine never put on purple robes again, but 
wore white till the day of his death in 337. 




CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

COKSTAOTIUS. 

337—364. 

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT left three 
sons, who shared the empire between them ; 
bat two were slain early in life, and only Constan- 
tius, the second and worst of the brothers, remained 
Emperor. He was an Arkn, and under him Atha- 
nasius, who had returned to Alexandria, was ban- 
ished again, and took refuge with the Pope Libe- 
rius at Rome. Pope — - papa in Latin — is the name 
for father, just as patriarch is ; and the Pope had 
become more important since the removal of the 
court from Rome ; but Constantius tried to over- 
come Liberius, banished him to Thrace, and placed 
an Arian named Felix in his room. The whole 
people of Rome rose in indignation, and Constaii 
355 



356 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

tius tried to appease them by declaring that Liberius 
and Felix should rule the Church together ; but 
the Romans would not submit to such, a decree. 
" Shall we have the circus factions in the Church ? " 
they said. "No ! one God, one Christ, one Bishop ! " 
In the end Felix was forced to fly, and Liberius 
kept his seat. Athanasius found his safest refuge 
in the deserts among the hermits of the Thebaid 
in Egypt. 

Meantime Sapor, king of Persia, was attacking 
Nisibis, the most Eastern city of the Roman empire, 
where a brave Catholic named James was Bishop, 
and encouraged the people to a most brave resist- 
ance, so that they held out for four months ; and 
Sapor, thinking the city was under some divine 
protection, and finding that his army sickened in 
the hot marshes around it, gave up the siege at 
last. 

Constantius was a little, mean-looking man, but 
he dressed himself up to do his part as Emperor. 
He had swarms of attendants like any Eastern 
prince, most of them slaves, who waited on him as 
if he was perfectly helpless. He had his face 
painted, and was covered with gold embroidery 
and jewels on all state occasions, and he used to 
stand like a statue to be looked at, never winking 



Constantius. 357 

an eyelid, nor moving his hand, nor doing anything 
to remind people that he was a man like them- 
selves. He was timid and jealous, and above all 
others, he dreaded his young cousin Julian, the 
only relation he had. Julian had studied at Athens, 
and what he there heard and fancied of the old 




JULIAN. 

Greek philosophy seemed to him far grander than 
the Christianity that showed itself in the lives of 
ConstaDtius and his courtiers. He was full of 
spirit and ability, and Constantius thought it best 
to keep him at a distance by sending him to fight 
the Germans on the borders of Gaul. There he 
was so successful, and was such a favorite with the 



358 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

soldiers, that Constantius sent to recall him. This 
only made the army proclaim him Emperor, and he 
set out with them across the Danubian country 
towards Constantinople, but on the way met the tid- 
ings that Constantius was dead. 

This was in 361, and without going to Rome 
Julian hastened on to Constantinople, where he was 
received as Emperor. He no longer pretended to 
be a Christian, but had all the old heathen temples 
opened again, and the sacrifices performed as in 
old times, though it was not easy to find any one 
who recollected how they were carried on. He 
said that all forms of religion should be free to 
every one, but he himself tried to live like an an- 
cient philosopher, getting rid of all the pomp of 
jewels, robes, courtiers, and slaves who had at- 
tended Constantius, wearing simply the old purple 
garb of a Roman general, sleeping on a lion's skin, 
and living on the plainest food. Meantime, he 
tried to put down the Christian faith by laughing 
at it, and trying to get people to despise it as some- 
thing low and mean. When this did not succeed, 
he forbade Christians to be schoolmasters or teachers; 
and as they declared that the ruin of the Temple 
of Jerusalem proved our Lord to have been a true 
Prophet, he commanded that it should be rebuilt* 



Constantius. 359 

As soon as the foundations were dug, there was an 
outburst of fiery smoke and balls of flame which 
forced the workmen to leave off. Such things 
sometimes happen when long-buried ruins are 
opened, from the gases that have formed there ; 
but it was no doubt the work of God's providence, 
and the Christians held it as a miracle. 

Julian hated the Catholic Christians worse than 
the Arians, because he found them more staunch 
against hirm Athanasius had come back to Alex- 
andria, but the Arians got up an accusation against 
him that he had been guilty of a murder, and 
brought forward a hand in a box to prove the 
crime ; and though Athanasius showed the man 
said to have been murdered alive, and with both 
his hands in their places, he was still hunted out 
of Alexandria, and had to hide among the hermits 
of the Thebaid again. When any search was 
threatened of the spot where he was, the horn was 
sounded which called the hermits together to 
church, and he was taken to another hiding-place. 
Sometimes he visited his flock at Alexandria in 
secret, and once, when he was returning down the 
Nile, he learned that a boat-load of soldiers was 
pursuing him. Turning back, his boat met them. 
They called out to know if Athanasius had been 



360 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

seen. " He was going down the Nile a little whik 
ago," the Bishop answered. His enemies hurried 
on, and he was safe. 

Julian was angered by finding it impossible to 
weaken paganism. At one grand temple in ' Asia, 
whither hundreds of oxen used to be brought to 
sacrifice, ail his encouragement only caused one 
goose to be offered, which the priest of the temple 
received as a grand gift. Julian expected, too, 
that pagans would worship their old gods and yet 
live the virtuous lives of Christians ; and he was 
disappointed and grieved to find that no works of 
goodness or mercy sprang from those who followed 
his belief. He was a kind man by nature, but he 
began to grow bitter with disappointment, and to 
threaten when he found it was of no use to per- 
suade ; and the Christians expected that there would 
be a great persecution when he should return from 
an expedition into the East against the king of 
Persia. 

He went with a fine army in ships down the 
Euphrates, and thence marched into Persia, where 
King Sapor was wise enough to avoid a battle, and 
only retreat before him. The Romans were half 
starved, and obliged to turn back. Then Sapor 
attacked their rear, and cut off their stragglers. 



Constantius. 363 

Julian shared all the sufferings of his troops, and 
was always wherever there was danger. At last a 
javelin pierced him under the arm. It is said that 
he caught some of his blood in his other hand, cast it 
up towards heaven, and cried, " Galilean, Thou hast 
conquered." He died in a few hours, in 363, and 
the Romans could only choose the best leader they 
knew to get them out of the sad plight they were 
in ■ — almost that of the ten thousand Greeks, ex- 
cept that they knew the roads and had friendly 
lands much nearer. Their choice fell on a plain, 
honest Christian soldier named Jovian, who did his 
best by making a treatj^ with Sapor, giving up all 
claim to any lands beyond the Tigris, and surren- 
dering the brave city of Nisibis which had held out 
so gallantly — a great grief to the Eastern Chris- 
tians. The first thing Jovian did was to have 
Athanasius recalled, but his reign did not last a 
year, and he died on the way to Constantinople. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

VALENTIKCANT AND HIS FAMILY. 

364—392. 

WHEN Jovian died, the army chose another 
soldier named Valentinian, a stout, brave, 
rough man, with little education, rude and pas- 
sionate, but a Catholic Christian. As soon as he 
reached Constantinople, he divided the empire with 
his brother Valens, whom he left to rule the East, 
while he himself w T ent to govern the West, chiefly 
from Milan, for the Emperors were not fond of 
living at Rome, partly because the remains of the 
Senate interfered with their full grandeur, and 
partly because there were old customs that were 
inconvenient to a Christian Emperor. He was in 
general just and honest in his dealings, but when 
he was angry he could be cruel, and it is said he 
364 



Valentinian and his Family. 



365 



had two bears to whom criminals were thrown. 
His brother Valens was a weaker and less able 
man, and was an Arian, who banished Athanasius 
once more for the fifth time; but the Church 
of Alexandria prevailed, and he was allowed to re- 
main and die in peace. The Creed that bears his 




ALEXANDRIA. 



name is not thought to be of his writing, but to 
convey what he taught. There was great talk at 
this time all over the cities about the questions be- 
tween the Catholics and Arians, and good men 



866 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

were shocked by hearing the holiest mysteries of 
the faith gossiped about by the idlers in baths and 
market-places. 

At this time Damasus, the Pope, desired a very 
learned deacon of his church, named Jerome, to 
make a good translation of the whole of the Scrip- 
tures into Latin, comparing the best versions, and 
giving an account of the books. For this purpose 
Jerome went to the Holy Land, and lived in a cell 
at Bethlehem, happy to be out of the way of the 
quarrels at Rome and Constantinople. There, too, 
was made the first translation of the Gospels into 
one of the Teutonic languages, namely, the Gothic. 
The Goths were a great people, of the same Teu- 
tonic race as the Germans, Franks, and Saxons — 
tall, fair, brave, strong, and handsome — and were 
at this time living on the north bank of the Dan- 
ube. Many of their young men hired themselves 
to fight as soldiers in the Roman army ; and they 
were learning Christianity, but only as Arians. It 
was for them that their Bishop Ulfilas translated 
the Gospels into Gothic, and invented an alphabet 
to write them in. A copy of this translation is 
still to be seen at Upsal in Sweden, written on pur- 
ple vellum in silver letters. 

Another great and holy man of this time was 



Vdlentinian and his Family* 369 

Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, who was the 
guide and teacher of Gratian, Valentinian's eldest 
son, a good and promising youth so far as he went, 
but who, after the habit of the time, was waiting to 
be baptized till he should be further on in life. 
Valentinian's second wife was named Justina ; and 
when he died, as it is said, from breaking a blood- 
vessel in a fit of rage, in 375, the Western Empire 
was shared between her little son Valentinian and 
Gratian. 

Justina was an Arian, and wanted to have «t 
church in Milan where she could worship without 
ascribing full honor and glory to God the Son ; but 
Ambrose felt that the churches were his Master's, 
not his own to be given away, and filled the Church 
with Christians, who watched there chanting 
Psalms day and night, while the soldiers Justina 
sent to turn them out joined them, and sang and 
prayed with them. 

Gratian did not choose to be called Pontifex 
Maximus, or chief priest of all the Roman idols, as 
all the Emperors had been ; and this offended 
many persons. A general named Maximus rose 
and reigned as Emperor in Britain, and Gratian 
had too much on his hands in the north to put him 
down. 



370 Young Folks* History of Rome* 

In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called 
Huns were coming from the West and driving the 
Goths before them, so that they asked leave from 
Yalens to come across the Danube and settle them- 
3elves in Thrace. The reply was so ill managed by 
Valens' counsellors that the Goths were offended, 
and came over the river as foes when they might 
have come as friends; and Valens was killed in 
battle with them at Adrianople in 378. 

Gratian felt that he alone could not cope with 
the dangers that beset the empire, and his brother 
was still a child, so he gave the Eastern Empire to 
a brave and noble Spanish general named Theodo- 
sius, who was a Catholic Christian and baptized, 
and who made peace with the Goths, gave them 
settlements, and took their young men into his 
armies. In the meantime, Maximus was growing 
more powerful in Britain, and Gratian, who chiefly 
lived in Gaul, was disliked by the soldiers especially 
for making friends with the young Gothic chief 
Alaric, whom he joined in hunting in the forests of 
Gaul in a way they thought unworthy of an Em- 
perov. Finding that he was thus disliked, Maximus 
crossed the Channel to attack him. His soldiers 
would not march against the British legions, and 
he was taken and put to death, bitterly lamenting 



Valentinian and his Family. 371 

that he had so long deferred his baptism till now it 
was denied to him. 

Young Valentinian went on reigning at Milan, 
and Maximus in Gaul. This last had become a 
Christian and a Catholic in name, but without lay- 
ing aside his fierceness and cruelty, so that, when 
some heretics were brought before him, he had 
them put to death, entirely against the advice of 
the great Saint and Bishop then working in Gaul, 
Martin of Tours, and likewise of St. Ambrose, who 
had been sent by Valentinian to make peace with 
the Gallic tyrant. ♦ 

It was a time of great men in the Church. In 
Africa a very great man had risen up, St» Augus- 
tine, who, after doubting long and living a life of 
'sin, was drawn to the truth by the prayers of his 
good mother Monica, and, when studying in Italy, 
listened to St. Ambrose, and became a hearty be- 
liever and maintainer of all that was gcod. He 
became Bishop of Hippo in Africa. 

But with the good there was much of evil. All 
the old cities, and especially Rome, were fall of a 
strange mixture of Christian show and heathen 
vice. There was such idleness and luxury in the 
towns that hardly any Romans had hardihood 
enough to go out to fight their own battles, but 



372 



Young Folks 9 History of Rome. 



hired Goths, Germans, Gauls, and Moors ; and 
these learned their ways of warfare, and used them 
in their turn against the Romans themselves. 
Nothing was so much run after as the games in the 
amphitheatres. People rushed there to watch the 




CONVENT ON THE HILLS. 

chariot races, and went perfectly wild with eager- 
ness about the drivers whose colors they wore ; and 
even the gladiator games were not done away 
with by Christianity, although these sports were 
continually preached against by the clergy, and no 
really devout person would go to the theatres. 



Valentinian and his Family, 373 

Much time was idled away at the baths, which 
were the place for talk and gossip, and where there 
was a soft steamy air which was enough to take 
away all manhood and resolution. The ladies' 
dresses were exceedingly expensive and absurd, 
and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous 
and helpless as in the times of heathenism. Good 
people tried to live apart. More than ever became 
monks and hermits ; and a number of ladies, who 
had been much struck with St. Jerome's teaching, 
made up a sort of society at Rome which busied it- 
self in good works and devotion. Two of the 
ladies, a mother and daughter, followed him to the 
Holy Land, and dwelt in a convent at Bethlehem. 
Maximus after a time advanced into Italy, and 
Valen^mian fled to ask the help of Theodosius, who 
came with an army, defeated and slew Maximus, 
and restored Valentinian, but only for a short 
time, for the poor youth was soon murdered by a 
Frank chief in his owi service named Arbogastes. 



CHAPTER XL. 

THEODOSITTS THE GREAT. 
392—395. 

THE Frank, Arbogastes, who had killed Valen- 
tinian did not make himself Emperor, but 
set up a heathen philosopher called Eugenius, who 
for a little while restored all the heathen pomp and 
splendor, and opened the temples again, threatening 
even to take away the churches and turn the chief 
one at Milan into a stable. They knew that Theo- 
dosius would soon come to attack them, so they 
prepared for a great resistance in the passes of the 
Julian Alps, and the 'mage of the Thundering 
Jupiter was placed to guard them. 

Theodosius had collected his troops and marched 
under the Labarum — that is to say, the Cross of 

Constantine, which had been the ensign of the im- 
374 



Theodosius the Great. 



375 



perial army ever since the battle of the Milvani 
Bridge. It was the cross combined with the two 
first Greek letters of the name Christ, and 
was carried, as the eagles had been, above a purple 




silk banner. The men of Eugenius'bore before them 
a figure of Hercules, and in the first battle they 
gained the advantage, for the more ignorant East- 
ern soldiers, though Christians, could not get rid of 



376 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

the notion that there was some sort of power in a 
heathen god, and thought Jupiter and Hercules 
were too strong for them. 

But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, 
so that they gained a great victory, and a terrible 
storm and whirlwind which fell at the same time 
upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army 
feel the more sure that God fought on their side. 
Eugenius was taken and put to death, and Arbo- 
gastes fell on his own sword. 

Theodosius thus united the empires of the East 
and West once more. He was a brave and gallant 
soldier, and a good and conscientious man, and was 
much loved and honored ; but he could be stern 
and passionate, and he was likewise greatly feared. 
At Antioch, the people had been much offended at a 
tax which Theodosius had laid on them ; they rose 
in rebellion, overthrew his statues and those of his 
family, and dragged them about in the mud. No 
sooner was this done than they began to be shocked 
and terrified, especially because of the insult to 
the statue of the Empress, who was lately dead 
after a most kind and charitable life. The citizens 
in haste sent off messengers, with the Bishop at 
their head, to declare their grief and sorrow, and 
entreat the Emperor's pardon. All the time they 




ROMAN HALL OF JUSTICE, 



377 



Theodosius the Great. 379 

were gone the city gave itself up to prayer and 
fasting, listening to sermons from the priest, John 
— called from his eloquence Chrysostom, or Golden 
Mouth — who preached repentance for all the most 
frequent sins, such as love of pleasure, irreverence 
at church, etc. The Bishop on his way met the Em- 
peror's deputies who were charged to enquire into 
the crime and punish the people ; and he redoubled 
his speed in reaching Constantinople, where he so 
pleaded the cause of the people that Theodosius 
freely forgave them, and sent him home to keep a 
happy Easter with them. This was while he was 
still Emperor only of the East. 

But when he was in Italy with Valentinian, three 
years later, there was another great sedition at 
Thessalonica. The people there were as mad as 
were most of the citizens of the larger towns upon 
the sports of the amphitheatre, and were vehe- 
mently fond of the charioteers whom they admired 
on either side. Just before some races that were 
expected, one of the favorite drivers committed a 
crime for which he was imprisoned. The people, 
wild with fury, rose and called for his release ; and 
when this was denied to them, they fell on the 
magistrates with stones, and killed the chief of 
them, Botheric, the commander of the forces. The 



380 Young Folks 9 History of Rome. 

news was taken to Milan, where the Emperor then 
was, and his wrath was so great and terrible that 
he commanded that the whole city should suffer. 
The soldiers, who were glad both to revenge their 
captain and to gain plunder, hastened to put his 
command into execution ; the unhappy people were 
collected in the circus, and slaughtered so rapidly 
and suddenly, that when Theodosius began to re- 
cover from his passion, and sent to stay the hands 
of the slayers, they found the city burning and the 
streets full of corpses. 

St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak forth in the 
name of the Church against such fury and cruelty; 
and when Theodosius presented himself at the church 
door to come to the Holy Communion, Ambrose 
met him there, and turned him back as a blood- 
stained sinner unfit to partake of the heavenly 
feast, and bidding him not add sacrilege to murder. 

Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned even 
more deeply, and yet had been forgiven. " If you 
have sinned like him, repent like him," said Am- 
brose ; and the Emperor went back weeping to his 
palace, there to remain as a penitent. Easter was 
the usual time for receiving penitents back to the 
Church, but at Christmas the Emperor presented 
himself again, hoping to win the Bishop's consent 



Theodosius the Great. 381 

to his return at once ; but Ambrose was firm, and 
again met him at the gate, rebuking him for trying 
to break the rules of the Church. 

"No/' said Theodosius; "I am not come to 
break the laws, but to entreat you to imitate the 
mercy of God whom we serve, who opens the gates 
of mercy to contrite sinners." 

On seeing how deep was his repentance, Ambrose 
allowed him to enter the Church, though it was 
not for some time that he was admitted to the Holy 
Communion, and all that time he fasted and never 
put on his imperial robes. He also made a law that 
no sentence of death should be carried out till 
thirty days after it was given, so as to give time to 
see whether it were hasty or just. 

During this reign another heresy sprang up, 
denying the Godhead of God the Holy Ghost, and, 
in consequence, Theodosius called together another 
Council of the Church, at which was added to the 
Nicene Creed those latter sentences which follow 
the words, " I believe in the Holy Ghost." In this 
reign, too, began to be sung the Te Deum, which is 
generally known as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It 
was first used at Milan, but whether he wrote it or 
not is uncertain, though there is a story that he 
had it sung for the first time at the baptism of St. 
Augustine. 



382 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



Theodosius only lived six months after his defeat 
of Eugenius, dying at Milan in 395, when onty 
fifty years old. He was the last who really de- 
served the name of a Roman Emperor, though the 
title was kept up, and Rome had still much to un- 
dergo. He left two young sons named Arcadius 
and Honorius, between whom the empire was 
divided. 




CHAPTER XLL 

ALAEIC THE GOTH. 
395—410. 

THE sons of the great Theodosius were, like 
almost all the children of the Roman Em- 
perors, vain and weak, spoiled by growing up as 
princes. Arcadius, who was eighteen, had the 
East, and was under the charge of a Roman officer 
called Rufinus ; Honorius who was only eleven, 
reigned at Rome under the care of Stilicho, who 
was by birth a Vandal, that is to say, of one of 
those Teutonic nations who were living all round 
the northern bounds of the empire, and whose 
sons came to serve in the Roman armies and learn 
Roman habits. Stilicho was brave and faithful, 
and almost belonged to the imperial family, for his 

wife Serena was neice to Theodosius, and his 
388 



384 Young Folks 9 History of Rome. 

daughter Maria was betrothed to the young Hono- 
rius. 

Stilicho was a very active, spirited man, who 
found troops to check the enemies of Rome on all 
sides of the Western Empire. Rufinus was not so 
faithful, and did great harm in the East by quar- 
relling with Arcadius' other ministers, and then, as 
all believed, inviting the Goths to come out of 
their settlements on the Danube and invade Greece, 
under Alaric, the same Gothic chief who had been 
a friend and companion of Gratian, and had fought 
under Theodosius. 

They passed the Danube, overran Macedon, and 
spread all over Greece, where, being Arian Chris- 
tians, they destroyed with all their might all the 
remaining statues and temples of the old pagans ; 
although, as they did not attack Athens, the pagans, 
who were numerous there, fancied that they were 
prevented by a vision of Apollo and Pallas Athene. 
Arcadius sent to his brother for aid, and Stilicho 
marched through Thrace ; Rufinus was murdered 
through his contrivance, and then, marching on 
into the Peloponnesus, he defeated Alaric in battle, 
and drove him out from thence, but no further 
than Epirus, where the Goths took up their station 
to wait for another opportunity ; but by this time 



Alarie the Goth. 387 

Arcadius had grown afraid of Stilicho, sent him 
back to Italy with many gifts and promises, and 
engaged Alarie to be the guardian of his empire, 
not only against the wild tribes, but against his 
brother and his minister. 

This was a fine chance for Alarie, who had all 
the temper of a great conqueror, and to the wild 
bravery of a Goth had added the knowledge and 
skill of a Roman general. He led his forces 
through the Alps into Italy, and showed himself 
before the gates of Milan. The poor weak boy 
Honorius was carried off for safety to Ravenna, 
while Stilicho gathered all the troops from Gaul, 
and left Britain unguarded by Roman soldiers, to 
protect the heart of the empire. With these he 
attacked Alarie, and gained a great victory at Pol- 
lentia ; the Goths retreated ; he followed and beat 
them again at Verona, driving them out of Italy. 

It was the last Roman victory, and it was cele- 
brated by the last Roman triumph. There had 
been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, 
but it was Honorius who entered Rome in the car 
of victory and was taken to the Capitol, and after- 
wards there were games in the amphitheatre as 
usual, and fights of gladiators. In the midst of 
the horrid battle a voice was heard bidding it to 



388 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

cease in the name of Christ, and between the 
Swords there was seen standing a monk in his dark 
^xrown dress, holding up his hand and keeping back 
The blows. There was a shout of rage, and he was 
2\it down and killed in a moment ; but then in 
horror the games were stopped. It was found that 
he was an Egyptian monk named Telemachus, 
freshly come to Rome. No one knew any more 
about him, but this noble death of his put an end 
to shows of gladiators. Chariot races and games 
went on, though the good and thoughtful disap- 
proved of the wild excitement they caused ; but 
the horrid sports of death and blood were ended 
for ever. 

Alaric was driven back for a time, but there were 
swarms of Germans who were breaking in where 
the line of boundary had been left undefended by 
the soldiers being called away to fight the Goths. 
A fierce heathen chief named Radegaisus advanced 
with at least 200,000 men as far as Florence, but 
was there beaten by the brave Stilicho, and was 
put to death, while the other prisoners were sold 
into slavery. But Stilicho, brave as he was, was 
neither loved nor trusted by the Emperor or the 
people. Some abused him for not bringing back 
^he old gods under whom n they said, Rome had pros- 



Alaric the Groth. 389 

pered ; others said that he was no honest Christian, 
and all believed that he meant to make his son 
Emperor. When he married this" son to a daughter 
of Arcadius, people made sure that this was his 
purpose. Honorius listened to the accusation, and 
his favorite Olympius persuaded the army to give 
up Stilicho. He fled to a church, but was per- 
suaded to come out of it, and was then put to 
death. 

And at that very time Alaric was crossing the 
Alps. There was no one to make any resistance. 
Honorius was at Ravenna, safe behind walls and 
marshes, and cared for nothing but his favorite 
poultry. Alaric encamped outside the walls of 
Rome, but he did not attempt to break in, waiting 
till the Romans should be starved out. When they 
had come to terrible distress, they offered to ransom 
their city. He asked a monstrous sum, which they 
refused, telling him what hosts there were of them, 
and that he might yet find them dangerous. " The 
thicker the hay, the easier to mow," said the Goth. 
" What will you leave us then ? " they asked. 
" Your lives," was the answer. 

The ransom the wretched Romans agreed to pay 
was 5000 pounds' weight of gold and 30,000 of 
silver, 4000 silk robes, 3000 pieces of scarlet cloth, 



390 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

and 3000 pounds of pepper. They stripped the roof 
of the temple in the Capitol, and melted down the 
images of the old gods to raise the sum, and Alaric 
drew off his men ; but he came again the next year, 
blocked up Ostia, and starved them faster. This 
time he brought a man named Attalus, whom he 
ordered them to admit as Emperor, and they did 
so ; but as the governor of Africa would send no 
corn while this man reigned, the people rose and 
drove him out, and thus for the third time brought 
Alaric down on them. The gates were opened to 
him at night, and he entered Rome on the 24th of 
August, 410, exactly eight hundred years after the 
sack of Rome by Brennus. 

Alaric did not wish to ruin and destroy the grand 
old city, nor to massacre the inhabitants ; but his 
Goths were thirsty for the spoil he had kept them from 
so long, and he gave them leave to plunder for six 
days, but not to kill, nor to do any harm to the 
churches. A set of wild, furious men could not, 
of course, be kept in by these orders, and terrible 
misfortunes befell many unhappy families ; but the 
mischief done was much less than could have been 
expected, and the great churches of St. Peter and 
St. Paul were unhurt. One old lady named Mar- 
cella, a friend of St. Jerome, was beaten to make 




ALAKlC-fc^BUJUA* 



Alaric the. Groth. 393 

her show where her treasures were ; but when at 
last her tormentors cam^ to believe that she had 
spent her all on charity, they led her to the shelter 
of the church with her friends, soon to die of what 
she had undergone. After twelve days, however, 
Alaric drew off his forces, leaving Rome to shift for 
itself. Bishop Innocent was at Ravenna, where he 
had gone to ask help from the Emperor ; but 
Honorius knew and cared so little that when he 
was told Rome was lost, he only thought of his 
favorite hen whose name was Rome, and said, 
"That cannot be, for I have just fed her." 

Alaric marched southward, the Goths plundering 
the villas of the Roman nobles on their way. At 
Cosenza, in the extreme south, he fell ill of a fever 
and died. His warriors turned the stream of the 
river Bionzo out of its course, caused his grave to 
be dug in the bed of the torrent, and when his 
corpse had been laid there, they slew all the slaves 
who had done the work, so that none might be 
able to tell where lay the great Goth. 



CHAPTER XLIL 

THE VANDALS. 

403. 

ONE good thing came of the Gothic conquest — 
the pagans were put to silence for ever. The 
temples had been razed, the idols broken, and no 
one set them up again ; but the whole people of 
Rome were Christian, at least in name, from that 
time forth ; and the temples and halls of justice 
began to be turned into churches. 

Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and 
the Bishop — or, as the Romans called him, Papa, 
father, or Pope — came back and helped them to 
put matters into order again. Alaric had left no 
son, but his wife's brother Atauif became leader of 
the Goths. At Rome he had made prisoner Theo- 
dosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her ; but 
he did not choose to rule at Rome, because, as he said, 

his Goths would never bear a quiet life in a city. So 
394 



The Vandals. 395 

he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, and 
led his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they 
conquered, and began a kingdom there. They 
were therefore known as the Visigoths, or Western 
Goths. 

Arcadius, in the meantime, reigned quietly at 
Constantinople, where St. John Chrysostom, the 
golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, was made 
Patriarch, or father-bishop. The games and races 
in the circus at Constantinople were as madly run 
after as they had ever been at Rome or Thessalon- 
ica ; there were not indeed shows of gladiators, 
but people set themselves with foolish vehemence 
to back up one driver against another, wearing their 
colors and calling themselves by their names, and 
the two factions of the Greens and the Blues were 
ready to tear each other to pieces. The Empress 
Eudoxia, Arcadius' wife, was one of the most vehe- 
ment of all, and was, besides, a vain, silly woman, 
who encouraged all kinds of pomp and expense. 
St. Chrysostom preached against all the mischiefs 
that thus arose, so that she was offended, and con- 
trived to raise up an accusation against him and 
have him driven out of the city. The people of 
Constantinople still showed so much love for him 
that she insisted on his being sent further off to the 



396 



Young Folks'" History of Rome. 



bleak shores of the Black Sea, and on the journey 
he died, his last words being, " Glory be to God in 
all things." 

Arcadius died in 408, leaving a young son, called 




ROMAN CLOCK. 



The Vandals. 397 

Theodosius II., in the care of his elder sister Pul- 
cheria, under whom the Eastern Empire lay at 
peace, while the miseries of the Western went on 
increasing. New Emperors were set up by the 
legions in the distant provinces, but were soon 
overthrown, while Honorius only remained at 
Ravenna by the support of the kings of the Teuton 
tribes ; and as he never trusted them or kept faith 
with them, he was always offending them and being- 
punished by fresh attacks on some part of his em- 
pire, for which he did not greatly care so long as 
they let him alone. 

Ataulf died in Spain, and Placidia came back to 
Ravenna, where Honorius gave her in marriage to 
a Roman general named Constantius, and she had 
a son named Valentinian, who, when his uncle died 
after thirty-seven years of a wretched reign, became 
Emperor in his stead, under his mother's guardian- 
ship, in 423. 

Two great generals who were really able men 
were her chief supporters — Boniface, Count or 
Commander of Africa ; and Aetius, who is some- 
times called the last of the Romans, though he was 
not by birth a Roman at all, but a Scythian. He 
gained the ear of the Empress Placidia, and per- 
suaded her that Boniface wanted to set himself up 



398 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



in Africa as Emperor, so that she sent to recall him, 
and evil friends assured him that she meant to put 
him to death as soon as he arrived. He was very 
much enraged, and though St. Augustine, now an 
old man, who had long been Bishop of Hippo, ad- 




SPANISH COAST. 



vised him to restrain his anger, he called on Gen- 
seric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help 
him to defend his province. 

The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons — 
tall, strong, fair-haired, and much like the Goths, 



The Vandals. 399 

and, like them, they were Arians. They had 
marauded in Italy, and then had followed the 
Goths to Spain, where they had established them- 
selves in the South, in the country called from them 
Vandalusia, or Andalusia. Their chief was only 
too glad to obey the summons of Boniface, but be- 
fore he came the Roman had found out his mistake ; 
Placidia had apologized to him, and all was right 
between him. But it was now too late ; Genseric 
and his Vandals were on the way, and there was 
nothing for it but to fight his best against them. 

He could not save Carthage, and, though he 
made the bravest defence in his power, he was 
driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortified 
that he was able to hold it out a whole year, during 
which time St. Augustine died, after a long illness. 
He had caused the seven penitential Psalms to be 
written out on the walls of his room, and was con- 
stantly musing on them. He died, and was buried 
in peace before the city was taken. Boniface held 
out for five years altogether before Africa was en- 
tirely taken by the Vandals, and a miserable time 
began for the Church, for Genseric was an Arian, 
and set himself to crush out the Catholic Church 
by taking away her buildings and grievously per- 
secuting her faithful bishops. 



400 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Valentinian III. made a treaty with, him, and even 
yielded up to him all right to the old Roman prov- 
ince of Africa ; but Genseric had a strong fleet of 
ships, and went on attacking and plundering Sicily, 
Corsica, Sardinia, Italy and the coasts of Greece. 

Britain, at the same time, was being so tormented 
by the attacks of the Saxons by sea, and the Cale- 
donians from the north, that her chiefs sent a 
piteous letter to Aetius in Gaul, beginning with 
"The groans of the Britons;" but Aetius could 
send no help, and Gaul itself was being overrun by 
the Goths in the south, the Burgundians in the 
middle, and the Pranks in the north, so that scarcely 
more than Italy itself remained to Valentinian. 

The Eastern half of the Empire was better off, 
though it was tormented by the Persians in the 
East, on the northern border by the Eastern Goths 
or Ostrogoths, who had stayed on the banks of the 
Danube instead of coming to Italy, and to the south 
by the Vandals from Africa. But Pulcheria was 
so wise and good that, when her young brother Theo- 
dosius II. died without children, the people begged 
her to choose a husband who might be an Emperor 
for them. She chose a wise old senator named 
Marcian, and when he died, she again chose an- 
other good and wise man named Zeno ; and thus 



The Vandals. 



403 



the Eastern Empire stood while the West was fast 
crumbling away. The nobles were almost all vain, 
weak cowards, who only thought of themselves, 
and left strangers to fight their battles ; and every 
one was cowed with fear, for a more terrible foe 
than any was now coming on them 




PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT. 



CHAPTER XLIIL 

ATTILA THE H IT K . 
435—457. 

THE terrible enemy who was coming against 
the unhappy Roman Empire was the nation 
of Huns, a wild, savage race, who were of the same 
stock as the Tartars, and dwelt as they do in the 
northern parts of Asia, keeping huge herds of 
horses, spending their life on horseback, and using 
mares' milk as food. They were an ugly, small, 
but active race, and used to cut their children's 
faces that the scars might make them look more 
terrible to their enemies. Just at this time a great 
spirit of conquest had come upon them, and they 
had, as said before, driven the Goths over the 
Danube fifty years ago, and seized the lands we 

still call Hungary. A most mighty and warlike 
404 



Attila the Hun. 407 

chief called Attila had become their head, and 
wherever he went his track was marked by blood 
and flame, so that he was called " The Scourge of 
God." His home was on the banks of the Theiss, 
in a camp enclosed with trunks of trees, for he did 
not care to dwell in cities or establish a kingdom, 
though the wild tribes of Huns from the furthest 
parts of Asia followed his standard — a sword 
fastened to a pole, which was said to be also his 
idol. 

He threatened to fall upon the two empires, and 
an embassy was sent to him at his camp. The 
Huns would not dismount, and thus the Romans 
were forced to address them on horseback. The 
only condition upon which he w T ould abstain from 
invading the empire was the paying of an enormous 
tribute, beyond what almost any power of theirs 
could attempt to raise. However, he did not then 
attack Italy, but turned upon Gaul. So much was 
he hated and dreaded by the Teutonic nations, that 
all Goths, Franks, and Burgundians flocked to join 
the Roman forces under Aetius to drive him back. 
They came just in time to save the city of Orleans 
from being ravaged by him, and defeated him in 
the battle of Chalons with a great slaughter • but he 



408 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

made good his retreat from Gaul with an immense 
number of captives, whom he killed in revenge. 

The next year he demanded that Valentinian's 
sister, Honoria, should be given to him, and when 
she was refused, he led his host into Italy and de- 
stroyed all the beautiful cities of the north. A 
great many of the inhabitants fled into the islands 
among the salt marshes and pools at the head of 
the Adriatic Sea, betAveen the mouths of the rivers 
Po and Adige, where no enemy could reach them ; 
and there they built houses and made a town, 
which in time became the great city of Venice, the 
queen of the Adriatic. - 

Aetius was still in Gaul, the wretched Valen- 
tinian at Ravenna was helpless and useless, and 
Attila proceeded towards Rome. It was well for 
Rome that she had a brave and devoted Pope in 
Leo. L, who went out at the head of his clergy to 
meet the barbarian in his tent, and threaten him 
with the wrath of Heaven if he should let loose his 
cruel followers upon the city. Attila was struck 
with his calm greatness, and, remembering that 
Alaric had died soon after plundering Rome, be- 
came afraid. He consented to accept of Honoria's 
dowry instead of herself, and to be content with a 
great ransom for the city of Rome. He then re- 



Attila the Hun. 411 

turned to his camp on the Danube with all his 
horde, and soon after his arrival he married a young 
girl whom he had made prisoner. The next morn- 
ing he was found dead on his bed in a pool of his 
own blood, and she was gone ; but as there was no 
wound about him, it was thought that he had 
broken a blood-vessel in the drunken fit in which 
he fell asleep, and that she had fled In terror. His 
warriors tore their cheeks with their daggers, say- 
ing that he ought to be mourned only with tears of 
blood ; but as they had no chief as able and daring 
as he, they gradually fell back again to their north- 
eastern settlements, and. troubled Europe no more. 
Valentinian thought the danger over, and when 
Aetius came back to Ravenna, he grew jealous of 
his glory and stabbed him with his own hand. Soon 
after he offended a senator named Maximus, who 
killed him in revenge, became Emperor, and mar- 
ried his widow, Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodo- 
sius II. of Constantinople, telling her that it was 
for love of her that her husband was slain. Eu- 
doxia sent a message to invite the dreadful Gen- 
seric, king of the Vandals, to come and deliver her 
from a rebel who had slain the lawful Emperor. 
Genseric's ships were ready, and sailed into the 
Tiber ; while the Romans, mad with terror, stoned 



412 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Maximus in their streets. Nobody had any courage 
or resolution but the Pope Leo, who went forth 
again to meet the barbarian and plead for his city ; 
but Genseric being an Arian, had not the same awe 
of him as the wild Huns, hated the Catholics, and 
was eager for the prey. He would accept no ran- 
som instead of the plunder, but promised that the 
lives of the Romans should be spared. This was 
the most dreadful calamity that Rome, once the 
queen of cities, had undergone. The pillage lasted 
fourteen days, and the Vandals stripped churches, 
houses, and all alike, putting their booty on board 
their ships ; but much was lost in a storm between 
Italy and Africa. The golden candlestick and 
shew-bread table belonging to the Temple at Jeru- 
salem were carried off to Carthage w^ith the spoil, 
and no less than sixty thousand captives, among 
them the Empress Eudoxia, who had been the 
means of bringing in Genseric, with her two 
daughters. The Empress was given back to her 
friends at Constantinople, but one of her daughters 
was kept by the Vandals, and was married to the 
son of Genseric. After plundering all the south of 
Italy, Genseric went back to Africa without trying 
to keep Rome or set up a kingdom ; and when he 
was gone, the Romans elected as Emperor a senator 




THE POPE'S HOU&^£. 



Attila the Hun. 415 

named Avitus, a Gaul by birth, a peaceful and 
good man. 

His daughter had married a most excellent Gaul- 
ish gentleman named Sidonius Apollinaris, who 
wrote such good poetry that the Romans placed his 
bust crowned with laurel in the Capitol. He 
wrote many letters, too, which are preserved to this 
time, and show that, in the midst of all this crum- 
bling power of Rome, people in Southern Gaul 
managed to have many peaceful days of pleasant 
country life. But Sidonius' quiet days came to an 
end when, layman and lawyer as he was, the peo- 
ple of Clermont begged him to be their Bishop. 
The Church stood, whatever fell, and people trusted 
more to their Bishop than to any one else, and 
wanted him to be the ablest man they could find. So 
Sidonius took the charge of them, and helped them 
to hold out their mountain city of Clermont for a 
whole j^ear against the Goths, and gained good 
terms for them at last, though he himself had to 
suffer imprisonment and exile from these Aristn 
Goths because of his Catholic faith. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

THEODOEJC THE OSTROGOTH. 

457—561. 

A VITUS was a good man, but the Romans 
grew weary of him, and in the year 457 they 
engaged Ricimer, a chief of the Teutonic tribe called 
Suevi, to drive him out, when he went back to 
Gaul, where he had a beautiful palace and garden. 
After ten months Ricimer chose another Sueve to 
be Emperor. He had been a captain under Aetius, 
and had the Roman name of Majorian. He showed 
himself brave and spirited ; led an army into Spain 
and attacked Genseric ; but he was beaten, and 
came back disappointed. Ricimer was, however, 
jealous of him, forced him to resign, and soon after 
poisoned him. 

After this, Ricimer really ruled Italy, but he 
416 



Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 417 

seemed to have a sort of awe of the title of Caesar 

Augustus, the Emperor, for he forbore to use it 

himself, and gave it to one poor weak wretch after 

another until his death in 472. His nephew went 

on in the same course ; but at last a soldier named 

Orestes, of Roman birth, gained the chief power, 

and set up as Emperor his own little son, whose 

Christian name was Romulus Augustus, making 

him wear the purple and the crown, and calling 

him by all the titles ; but the Romans made his 

name into Augustulus, or Little Augustus. At 

the end of a year, a Teutonic chief named Odoacer 

crossed the Alps at the head of a great mixture of 

different German tribes, and Orestes could make 

no stand against him, but was taken and put to 

death. His little boy was spared, and was placed 

at Sorrento ; but Odoacer sent the crown and robes 

of the West to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, saying 

that one Emperor was enough. So fell the Roman 

powder in 476, exactly twelve centuries after the date 

of the founding of Rome. It was thought that this 

was meant by the twelve vultures seen by Romulus, 

and that the seven which Remus saw denoted the 

seven centuries that the Republic stood. It was 

curious, too, that it should be with the two names of 

Romulus and Augustus that Rome and her empire 

fell 



418 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Odoacer called himself king, and, indeed, the 
Western Empire had been nearly all seized by dif- 
ferent kings — the Vandal kings in Africa, the 
Gothic kings in Spain and Southern Gaul, the Bur- 
gundian kings and Frank kings in Northern Gaul, 
the Saxon kings in Britain. The Ostro or Eastern 
Goths, who had since the time of Valens dwelt on 
the banks of the Danube, had been subdued by 
Attila, but recovered their freedom after his death. 
One of their young chiefs, named Theodoric, was 
sent as a hostage to Constantinople, and there 
learned much. He became king of the Eastern 
Goths in 470, and showed himself such a dangerous 
neighbor to the Eastern Empire that, to be rid of 
him the Emperor Zeno advised him to go and at- 
tack Odoacer in Italy. The Ostrogoths marched 
seven hundred miles, and came over the Alps into 
the plains of Northern Italy, where Odoacer fought 
with them bravely, but was beaten. They besieged 
him even in Ravenna, till after three years he was 
obliged to surrender and was put to death. 

Rome could make no defence, and fell into 
Theodoric's hands with the rest of Italy; but he 
was by far the best of the conquerors — he did not 
hurt or misuse them, and only wished his Goths to 
learn of them and become peaceful farmers. He 




ROMULUS AUGUSTUS RESIGNS THE CROWN 



Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 421 

gave them the lands which had lost their owners ; 
about thirty or forty thousand families were settled 
there by him on the waste lands, and the Romans 
who were left took courage and worked too. He 
did not live at Rome, though he came thither and 
was complimented by the Senate, and he set a sum 
by every year for repairing the old buildings ; but 
he chiefly lived at Verona, where he reigned over 
both the Eastern and Western Goths in Gaul and 
Italy, 

He was an Arian, but he did not persecute the 
Catholics, and to such persons as changed their 
profession of faith to please him he showed no more 
favor, saying that those who were not faithful to 
their God would never be faithful to their earthly 
master. He reigned thirty-three years, but did not 
end as well as he began, for he grew irritable and 
distrustful with age ; and the Romans, on the other 
hand, forgot that they were not the free, prosperous 
nation of old, and displeased him. Two of their 
very best men, Boethius and Symmachus, were 
by him kept for a long time prisoners at Rome and 
then put to death. While Boethius was in prison 
at Pavia, he wrote a book called The Consolations 
of Philosophy, so beautiful that the English king 



422 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

Alfred translated it into Saxon four centuries later. 
Theodoric kept up a correspondence with the other 
Gothic kings wherever a tribe of his people dwelt, 
even as far as Sweden and Denmark ; but as even 
he could not write, and only had a seal with the 
letters BE 04 with which to make his signature, 
the whole was conducted in Latin by Roman slaves 
on either side, who interpreted to their masters. 
An immense number of letters from Theodoric's 
secretary are preserved, and show what an able 
man his master was, and how well he deserved his 
name of "The Great." He died in 526, leaving 
only two daughters. Their two sons, Amalric and 
Athalaric, divided the Eastern and Western Goths 
between them again. 

Seven Gothic kings reigned over Northern Italy 
after Theodoric. They were fierce and restless, 
but had nothing like his strength and spirit, and 
they chiefly lived in the more northern cities — 
Milan, Verona, and Ravenna, leaving Rome to be 
a tributary city to them, where there still remained 
the old names of Senate and Consuls, but the per- 
son who was generally most looked up to and 
trusted w r as the Pope. All this time Rome was 
leavening the nations who had conquered her. 



Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 



423 



When they tried to learn civilized ways, it was 
from her ; they learned to speak her tongue, never 
wrote but in Latin, and worshipped with Latin 
prayers and services. Far above all, these conquer- 
ors learned Christianity from the Romans. When 
everything else was ruined, the Bishop and clergy 




remained, and became the chief counsellors and ad- 
visers of many of these kings. 

It was just at this time that there was living at 
Monte Casino, in the South of Italy, St. Benedict, 
an Italian hermit, who was there joined by a num- 
ber of others who, like him, longed to pray for the 
sinful world apart rather than fight and struggle 
with bad men. He formed them into a great band 



424 



Young Folks' History of Rome. 



of monks, all wearing a plain dark dress w A ch a 
hood, and following a strict rule of plain living, 
hard work, and prayers at seven regular hours in 
the course of the day and night. His rule was 
called the Benedictine, and houses of monks arose 
in many places, and were safe shelters in these 
fierce times. 




CHAPTER XLV. 

BELISABIUS. 
533—563. 

THE Teutonic nations soon lost their spirit 
when they had settled in the luxurious 
Roman cities, and as they were as fierce as ever, their 
kings tore one another to pieces. A very able Em- 
peror, named Justinian, had come to the throne in 
the East, and in his armies there had grown up a 
Thracian who was one of the greatest and best 
generals the world has ever seen. His name was 
Belisarius, and strange to say, both he and the Em- 
peror had married the daughters of two charioteers 
in the circus races. The Empress was named 
Theodora, the general's wife Antonina, and their 
acquaintance first made Belisarius known to Jus- 
tinian, who, by his means, ended by winning back 
great part of the Western Empire. 

425 



426 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

He began with Africa, where Genseric's grand- 
son was reigning over the Vandals, and paying so 
little heed to his defences that Belisarius landed 
without any warning, and called all the multitudes 
of old Roman inhabitants to join him, which they 
joyfully did. He defeated the Vandals in battle, 
entered Carthage, and restored the power of the 
empire. He brought away the golden candlestick 
and treasures of the Temple, and the cross believed 
to be the true one, and carried them to Constanti- 
nople, whence the Emperor sent them back to the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. 

Just as Belisarius had returned to Constantino- 
ple, a piteous entreaty came to Justinian from 
Amalosontha, the daughter of Theocloric, who had 
been made prisoner by Theodotus, the husband she 
had chosen. It seemed to be opening a way for 
getting back Italy, and Justinian sent off Belisarius ; 
but before he had sailed, the poor Gothic queen 
had been strangled in her bath. Belisarius, how- 
ever, with 4500 horse and 3000 foot soldiers, landed 
in Sicily and soon conquered the whole island, all 
the people rejoicing in his coming. He then crossed 
to Khegium, and laid siege to Naples. As usual, 
the inhabitants were his friends, and one of them 
showed him the way to enter the city through an 



BelisariuSo 427 

old aqueduct which opened into an old woman's 
garden. 

Theodotus was a coward as well as a murderer, 
and fled away, while a brave warrior named Vitiges 
was proclaimed king by the Goths at Rome, But 



with the broken walls and all the Roman citizens 
against him, Vitiges thought it best not to try 
to hold out against Belisarius, and retreated to 
Ravenna, while Rome welcomed the Eastern army 
as deliverers. But Vitiges was collecting an army 
at Ravenna, and in three months was besieging 
Rome again. Never had there been greater bravery 
and patience than Vitiges showed outside the walls 



428 Young Folks' History of Home. 

of Rome, and Belisarius inside, during the summer 
of 536. There was a terrible famine within ; all 
kinds of strange food were used in scanty measure, 
and the Romans were so impatient of suffering, 
that Belisarius was forced to watch them day and 
night to prevent them betraying him to the enemy. 
Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly 
all the people of Rome died of hunger and wretch- 
edness ; and the Goths, in the unhealthy Campagna 
around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, 
had all perished except a small band, which Vitiges 
led back to Ravenna, whither Belisarius followed 
him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carried 
him to Constantinople. Justinian gave him an 
estate where he could live in peace. 

The Moors in Africa revolted, and Belisarius 
next went to subdue them. While he was there, the 
Goths in Italy began to recover from the blow he 
had given them, and chose a brave young man 
named Totila to be their king. In a very short 
time he had won back almost all Italy, for there 
really were hardly any men left, and even Justinian 
had only two small armies to dispose of, and those 
made up of Thracians and Isaurians from the shores 
of the Black Sea. One of these was sent with 
Belisarius to attack the Goths, but was not strong 



Belisarius. 431 

enough to do more than just hold Totila in check, 
and Justinian would not even send him all the help 
possible, because he dreaded the love the army 
bore to him. After four years of fighting with 
Totila he was recalled, and a slave named Narces, 
who had always lived in the women's apartment in 
the palace, was sent to take the command. He 
was really able and skilled, and being better sup- 
ported, he gained a great victory near Rome, in 
which Totila was killed, and another near Naples, 
which quite overcame the Ostrogoths, so that they 
never became a power again. Italy was restored 
to the Empire, and was governed by an officer from 
Constantinople, who lived at Ravenna, and was 
called the Exarch. 

Belisarius, in the meantime, was sent to fight 
with the king of Persia, Chosroes, a very warlike 
prince, who had overrun Syria and carried off many 
prisoners from Antioch. Belisarius gained victory 
after victory over him, and had just driven him 
back over the rivers, when again came a recall, and 
Narses was sent out to finish the war. Theodora, 
the Empress, wanted to reign after her husband, 
and had heard that, on a report coming to the army 
of his death, Belisarius had said that he should give 
his vote for Justin, the right heir. So she worked on 



432 Young Folks* History of Rome. 

the fears all Emperors had — that their troops 
might proclaim a successful general as Emperor, 
and again Belisarius was ordered home, while 
Narses was sent to finish what he had begun. 

There was one more war for this great man when 
the wild Bulgarians invaded Thrace, and though 
his soldiers were little better than timid peasants, 
he drove them back and saved the country. But 
Justinian grew more and more jealous of him, and, 
fancying untruly that he was in a plot for placing 
Justin on the throne, caused him to be thrown into 
prison, and sent him out from thence stripped of 
everything, and with his eyes torn out. He found 
a little child to lead him to a church door, where 
he used to sit with a wooden dish before him for 
alms. When it was known who the blind beggar 
was, there was such an uproar among the people 
that Justinian was obliged to give him back his 
palace and some of his riches ; but he did not live 
much longer. 

Though Justinian behaved so unjustly and un- 
gratefully to this great man and faithful servant, 
he is noted for better things, namely, for making 
the Church of St. Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom, 
which Constantine had built at Constantinople, 
the most splendid of all buildings, and for having 



Belisarius. 433 

the whole body of Roman laws thoroughly over- 
looked and put into order. Many even of the old 
heathen laws were very good ones, but there were 
others connected with idolatry that needed to be 
done away with ; and in the course of years so 
many laws and alterations had been made, that it 
was the study of a lifetime even to know what they 
were, or how to act on them. Justinian set his 
best lawyers to put them all in order, so that it 
might be more easy to work by them. The Roman 
citizens in Greece, Italy, and all the lands overrun 
by the Teutonic nations were still judged by their 
own laws, so that this was a very useful work ; and 
it was so well done that the conquerors took them 
up in time, and the Roman law was the great 
model studied everywhere by those who wished to 
understand the rules of jurisprudence, that is, of 
law and justice. Thus in another way Rome con- 
quered her conquerors. 

Justinian died in 563, and was succeeded by his 
nephew Justin, whose wife Sophia behaved almost 
as ill to Narses as Theodora had done to Belisa- 
rius, for while he was doing his best to defend 
Italy from the savage tribes who were ready at 
any moment to come over the Alps, she sent him a 
distaff, and ordered him back to his old slavery in 
the palace. 



CHAPTER XLVL 

POPE GREGORY THE GREAT. 
563—800. 

NO sooner was Narses called home than another 
terrible nation of Teutones, who had hithero 
dwelt in the North, began to come over the Alps. 
These were the Longbearcls, or Lombards, as they 
were more commonly called ; fierce and still heathen. 
Their king, Albion, had carried off Rosamond, the 
daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another 
Teutonic tribe. There was a most terrible war, in 
which Kunimund was killed and all his tribe broken 
up and joined with the Lombards. With the two 
united, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the 
North. Ravenna, Verona, Milan, and all the large 
towns held out bravely against them, but were 
taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the 
434 



Pope Gregory the Great. 435 

Emperor at Constantinople. Alboin had kept the 
skull of Kunimund as a trophy, and had had it set 
in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made 
him believe that the reward of the brave in the 



POPE GREGORY THE GREAT. 



other world would be to drink mead from the skulls 
of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit at Verona, 
he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in 
this horrible cup. She had always hated him, and 



436 Young Folks' History of Rome. 

this made her revenge her father's death by stab- 
bing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lom- 
bard power did not, however, fall with him ; his 
nephew succeeded him, and ruled over the country 
we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by 
them, but was still in name belonging to the Em- 
peror, though he had little power there, and the 
Senate governed it in name, with all the old magis- 
trates. The Praetor at the time the Lombards 
arrived was a man of one of the old noble families, 
Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call 
him, Gregory. He had always been a good and 
pious man, and while he took great care to fulfil all 
the duties of his office, his mind was more and 
more drawn away from the world, till at last he 
became a monk of St. Benedict, gave all his vast 
wealth to build and endow monasteries and hospi- 
tals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, 
nursing them, studying the Holy Scriptures, and 
living only on pulse, which his mother sent him 
every day in a silver dish — the only remnant of 
his wealth — till one day, having nothing else to 
give a shipwrecked sailor who asked alms, he be- 
stowed it on him. 

He was made one of the seven deacons who were 
called Cardinal Deacons, because they had charge 




THE POPE'S PULPIT, 



Pope Gregory the Great. 439 

of the poor of the principal parishes of Rome ; and 
it was when going about on some errand of kind- 
ness that he saw the English slave children in the 
market, and planned the conversion of their coun- 
try ; but the people would not let him leave 
Rome, and in 590, the Senate, the clergy, and the 
people chose him Pope. It was just then that 
a terrible pestilence fell on Rome, and he made the 
people form seven great processions — ■ of clergy, of 
monks, of nuns, of children, of men, of wives, and 
of widows — all singing litanies to entreat that the 
plague might be turned away. Then it was that 
he beheld an angel standing on the tomb of Hadrian, 
and the plague ceased. Ever after, the great old 
tomb has been called the Castle of St. Angelo. 

It was a troublous time, but Gregory was so 
much respected that he was able to keep Rome 
orderly and safe, and to make peace between the 
Emperor Maurice and the Lombards' king, Agilulf, 
who- had an excellent wife, Theodolinda. She was 
a great friend of the Pope, wrote a letter to him, 
and did all she could to support him. The Eastern 
Empire was still owned at Rome, but when there 
was an attempt to make out that the Patriarch of 
Constantinople was superior to the Pope, Gregory 
upheld the principle that no Patriarch had any 



440 . Young Folks' History of Rome, 

right to be above the rest, nor to be called Univer- 
sal Bishop. Gregory was a very great man, and 
the justice and wisdom of his management did 
much to make the Romans look to their Pope as 
the head of affairs even after his death in 604. 

The Greek Empire sent an officer to govern the 
extreme South of Italy, which, like Rome and 
Venice, still owned the Emperor ; but all the 
troops that could be hired were soon wanted to 
fight with the Arabs, whose false prophet Mahom- 
med had taught them to spread religion with the 
sword. There was no one capable of making head 
against the Lombards, and the Popes only kept 
them off by treaties and good management ; and at 
last, in 741, Pope Gregory III. put himself under 
the protection of Charles Martel, the great Frank 
captain who had beaten the Mahometans at the 
battle of Tours. Charles Martel was rewarded by 
being made a Roman senator, so was his son Pippin, 
who was also king of the Franks, and his grandson 
Charles the Great, who had to come often to Italy 
to protect Rome, and at last broke up the Lombard 
kingdom, was chosen Roman Emperor as of old, and 
crowned by Pope Leo III. in the year 800. From 
that time there was again the Western Empire, 
commonly called the Holy Roman Empire, the 








BATTLE OF TOUKC. 



Pope Gregory the Great. 443 

Emperor, or Caesar — Kaisar, as the Germans still 
call him — ■ being generally also king of Germany 
and king of Lombardy. Rome was all this time 
chiefly under the power of the Popes, who grew in 
course of years to be more and more of princes, 
and at the same time to claim more power over the 
Church, calling themselves Universal Bishops con- 
trary to the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. 
AH this, however, belongs to the history of Europe 
in modern times, and will be found in the history 
of Germany, since there were many struggles be- 
tween the Popes and Emperors. For Rome has 
really had two histories, and those who visit Rome 
and study the wonderful buildings there may dwell 
on the old or the new, the pagan or the Christian, 
as their minds lead them, or else on that strange 
middle time when idolatry and Christian^ were 
struggling together. 



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